Title: On the Wallaby, The Diary of a Queensland Swagman
Author: Edward S Sorenson
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eBook No.: 1400721h.html
Language: English
Date first posted: February 2014
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Foreword

The last serial story—"The Squatter King," from
the pen of Edward S. Sorenson, which we published in the
"Catholic Press," was an immense popular success. No one
knows Australian bush life better than he, and among Australian
writers he is, perhaps, the greatest favourite to-day.

We have been fortunate enough to secure the serial rights of his
new story—"On the Wallaby: the Diary of a Queensland
Swagman." This is a plain bush yarn, relating in humorous vein
the experiences and adventures of a young man, who, finding himself
stranded in Brisbane, where he knew no one, shouldered his swag and
struck out into the bush to look for a job. His track from
Breakfast Creek to beyond the Maranoa River, may be traced on the
map, for he deals only with real places—and real
people—and what he goes through is what the majority of
swagmen go through. Always an optimist, he sees the humour of the
situations, and his narrative is embellished with details of
bushcraft, and with the yarns and the fun of camp fire and
track.

CHAPTER I.
Setting out from Brisbane — Getting Directions.

From the status of an "esteemed citizen" in
comparative affluence to the humble lot of a swagman was not an
easy transition, though the drop was an abrupt one.

I remember how ashamed I was at the start, though there was
really nothing to be ashamed of in a man going on the track to look
for a job, and carrying his bed and his wardrobe with him. It
showed independence and grit. Nobody knew me in Brisbane, yet I
fancied that everybody in the streets was looking at me as though I
were an oddity in the human throng. I had strapped my swag up into
a short bundle, and I carried it under my arm so that it would look
like a parcel.

It was the 6th day of August, 1895—a fresh, inspiriting
morning, and grand weather for a walking tour. I was young, strong,
and used to roughing it—good qualifications for the wallaby.
Still, I felt very miserable that morning. I had been enjoying a
long holiday—flying around and seeing life while the money
lasted. The inevitable financial slump had left me stranded in
Brisbane. Work was scarce; somehow it always is when I want a job.
In any case, as a bushman born and bred, I had no chance in the
city. The world of vast distances was my home; and having no other
means of getting, there I pinned my faith to Blucher.

An old mate of mine, whom I had not seen for some years, was
head-stockman on Colinton, a squattage on the Brisbane River, 80
miles from the city; so I decided to steer for Colinton to begin
with, and from the outskirts of Brisbane I stopped every
likely-looking person I met to get "directions." The man
about town knew very little about outside; and though the
occasional bushman I interviewed possessed some knowledge of almost
every road one could mention, his instructions were not very easy
to follow.

It not infrequently happens that a stranger is so befogged by
the directions he receives that he has more trouble in keeping the
right road by their aid than he would have had without them. The
bushman, describing the road as he last saw it, which might be last
week or last year, gives a rigmarole of details concerning the
turns and hollows, the big tree, the dogleg fence, and the black
stump; and while he is telling all this he is sketching out the map
of it in the dust with a stick.

Loaded with this information you start, and perhaps you will
notice something important which he missed, and that uncomfortable
feeling of the lost one comes over you at once. If you don't see
the bogged cow, or the dead tree (which has probably fallen down),
the feeling increases. Presently all the little details get mixed
up till you don't know anything, and you are in perpetual misery
till you get to the end of those directions—or meet somebody
who can relieve your anxiety in respect to turn-off roads and
forked roads.

In giving directions nothing should be mentioned that is not
absolutely necessary for the traveller to know, such as well
traversed branch roads and striking landmarks. Bogged cows and dead
horses are not landmarks except for the time being. Some bush men
overlook the fact that many objects which most impress him change
with the effluxion of time.

One person whom I approached with the stereotyped question was
working on the road near Breakfast Creek; a big, jovial
laughing-eyed man whose occupation suggested an intimate
acquaintance with the thoroughfare.

"Want to go to Bindelby?" he repeated, leaning on his
shovel. "Nothing easier. Keep straight along, and you won't
miss it. Though what you want to go to Bindelby for I don't know,
seein' it's only a house in a little square o' land that wouldn't
keep more 'n a horse an' a cow or two, an there's no job there for
a workin' man to-day or tomorrow, or any other day."

"It's just a stage on my way," I explained. "Are
there any turn-offs?"

"Well, yes, a few. But stick to this road till you see it
run into a gate. Go through that—you'd better open it first
though. It swings to your right when you're pullin' it to you. Shut
it. Then turn round an' keep along the road again. It wriggles a
lot, in consequence o' dodgin' trees an' one thing an' another, but
stick to it, an' you'll find it's a road to be depended on. Never
mind the branch roads—keep off 'em, or they 'll take you
astray."

"Well, are there any particular landmarks?"

"Lemme see. You'll cross a gully running like a stranded
eel. There's a spotted bullock feedin' alongside it. That's five
mile. Next, you'll see a kangaroo sittin' bolt upright on your
left. That's eight mile. Then you'll see a big hole on your right.
But don't bother about fillin' your billy there. There's no water
in it. . . . That's half way. Next, you'll come to a lot of trees
on a hill. There's some parrots on the outside one."

"When were you along there?" I inquired.

"Three years ago." He spoke quite seriously.
"Byan'by you'll strike a big flat, with a dead dog on it.
Three miles from that there's a house with two chimneys, an' smoke
comin' out of one of 'em. That's Bindelby."

As I walked on I fell to thinking, not so much of the man with
the shovel, as of old Tom Raglan, who lived in my own native
district across the southern border. I had occasion one day to go
to his place, of the exact location of which I was not certain, and
on the way I asked a road-maintenance man where I must turn off the
highway to reach it.

"D'yer know that track that turns off th' other side o' the
tee-tree swamp?" he asked me.

"Yes."

"That's not it. There's a red hill a bit farther along with
a stump on it. The stump's got a piece knocked off the side where a
waggon hit. I think it was Dooley's waggon. I did hear there used
to be a stone just beyond it, but I believe Dooley picked that up
last time he was along to shy at Anderson's bull. He's an ugly
brute, is Anderson's bull, an' he's nearly always about that red
hill. I remember—"

"Yes; but about the road to Raglan's?" I reminded
him.

"There's a track turns off just over the red hill," he
said. "That goes to Denehy's selection."

"And where does Raglan's turn off?"

"Two miles past Denehy's road you'll see where Nolan was
bogged with a load of timber last week. Nolan keeps a pub down at
the junction. I've seen the time when Nolan—"

"I've known him since I was a boy," I hastily
interrupted. "I'm in a hurry to get to Raglan's."

"I'm comin' to Raglan's. When you pass the mud-hole you'll
see a road runnin' like this."

He squatted down and commenced to perplex me with a bushman's
map, drawing a line with his finger to represent the main road,
others to represent branch roads, parallel and intersecting lines
for fences, dots for trees and squares for houses—some of
them three miles off the road, and all hopelessly out of sight.
Then he told me to turn off at an ironbark tree that had a limb
sticking out like this (another map), and pass a log lying like
this (another map), when the road takes a turn, and runs like that
(more map). "You'll have all straight sailin' then," he
concluded.

I rode off. It was 27 miles to the place. I found it and
delivered my message to Mrs. Raglan, as "Tom was away workin'
on the roads." I returned next day, and as I passed the
maintenance man he asked "Did you find Raglan's?"

"Yes," I said; "Tom Raglan wasn't at home,
though."

"Did you want to see him," he asked, with quickened
interest.

"I did. I had an important letter for him. I left it with
the missus."

"Hang it," said he. "I'm Tom Raglan!"

CHAPTER II.
Rules of the Track—A Diverting Hour with a Veteran.

While having my mid-day meal at the foot of a hill beyond
Breakfast Creek I was joined by a veteran whose very hide bore
evidence of an extensive knowledge of western latitudes. Old and
grizzly, unkempt and travel-stained, he was "goin' in."
He strode jauntily up to where I sat, nibbling a blade of grass as
he came.

"Well, young fellow," he said, unslinging his swag and
depositing it carefully in the shade. "How goes it?"

"All right, so far," I answered.

He looked at me closely for a moment. "You don't seem
unfamiliar to me," he said, thoughtfully. "What might
your name be, if it's a fair question?"

"Edinbury Swan," I replied. He shook his head.
"Never bumped that before. I'd certainly remember it if I had.
Unusual name!—How long have you been at
this?"—critically eyeing my hat. It was a black and
white boater such as young fellows wear about town.

"Only to-day."

"To-day? Phugh! I said that myself 35 years ago. That's a
tidy while before you left the dockyard. . . . 'Taint none o' my
business what sent you adrift; but you ought to get another hat.
You're right out of the fashion here."

From that he drifted into a dissertation on the ways and customs
of those who tramp the long roads in search of work, and
incidentally gave me much gratuitous advice. His name, as I learned
from his habit of now and again using it himself, was Jack
Blunt.

"Th' main problem you've got to solve," he continued,
"is the grand art of livin' sumptuous on nothing a year. That
isn't very difficult, as every squattage supplies swagmen with
rations, exceptin' an odd hungry place that don't respect the
honoured customs of the country. But don't be in a tearin' hurry
rushin' up to the store. Do a quiet beat round, an' land yourself
in the kitchen about meal time. You'll perhaps get a feed, an' some
tucker to take with you. Then you want to go to the boss with your
bags—big ones. No use thinkin' you'll get 'em filled if
they're small ones. You won't, he's nearly sure to be into his last
half bag o' flour. Never mind that. Half a bag's more 'n you
want.

"By-an'-bye you'll want tobacco. Now, th' golden rule on
th' track's this: Never cadge off a footman, or the one-horse
bloke. The cove who has two nags is good game. So are drovers an'
carriers, and anyone who's in a billet—particularly th' chap
at th' store. Nail him. Don't wait till you want a smoke. Seize
every chance you see till you get a supply in. Got a match on you?
When you can't carry any more tobacco, accumulate matches. Bless me
soul, safeties!"

After lighting his pipe, he resumed:

"You'll have to change the style of your clothes. Got any
with patches on? Then keep an eye about you an' cop the first bit
of stuff you see an' patch your oldest pair o' pants with it. No
holes in 'em? What's that matter? The patches will cover the places
where the holes ought to be. Those will be your ration pants. You
only want two more pair—track pants an' Sunday pants. Sunday
is the day you're in a town; if it isn't actually Sunday, it's
Sunday-pants day, anyway.

"Lemme see, now. You've got tobacco and matches and tucker
and rations. Well, now, young fellow, you want a job. Reach me that
firestick, will you? You're a midlin' poor hand at makin' a fire. I
can tell you that much. Would you mind shovin' my billy in a bit.
Your best track is the stock route. You'll find it convenient to
meet drovers even if they're full-handed. It's one of the beautiful
customs of the bush for the drovers' cook, like the shearers' cook,
the rouseabouts' cook, the cattle-musterers' cook, and the
lamb-markers' cook, to receive the weary wayfarer with open arms,
and send him away rejoicin'. Feel your way along, and make for
places where there's a busy crowd; and if there's nothing for you
to do, you'll find the scenery worth lookin' at wherever a lot o'
men dine together. When you go to a squattage, find out from the
men if an extra hand is wanted for any particular kind of work.
Whatever the work may be, it's your profession. Been at it all your
lifetime, though you can turn your hand to other things,
besides."

At this point his billy boiled, and, laying his pipe aside, he
made his tea, after which he unpacked an astonishing load of
assorted provisions. These he laid out carefully on the grass to
the accompaniment of an appropriate recitation:

Place side by side with johnny-cakes or damper
Three bags containing sugar, flour and tea,
A billy and some meat, and swaggie's hamper
Will, with a pannikin, completed be.

Then spread you out a blanket and some
sheeting,
And roll within a little dilly-bag,
A change of togs, a coat for Sunday meeting—
And there you have his ordinary swag.

Build you a fire beside some eucalyptus,
By No Man's Creek, and 'neath the starry dome,
Where dingoes wander whence their lonely crypt is—
And there you have his customary home.

Take you a man sunbrowned, with thews of iron,
A cheerful heart, stout as an ironclad,
And dress him like a wheel without a tire on—
And there you have the nomad on the pad.

Then give him but his health and strength for
hawking,
And his condition labels him "for hire;"
Turn him adrift on hardy feet for walking,
And to complete him call him Long Maguire.

Mr. Blunt now commenced heartily on his meal, sitting on the
ground with his legs crossed in an attitude of such elegant ease
that made seats superfluous. He was in a happy frame of mind; he
had a little hut on the bank of the river above Brisbane, where he
intended to live comfortably, and rest till the end of summer. He
did not look to be worth anything, but his bank book, greasy and
crumpled and dog-eared, showed a credit balance of a thousand
pounds.

"I'll try a lump o' that brownie of yours; it looks better
'n mine," he said, when he had got through his first course.
"Woman made? I thought so. Lor' bless her doughy fivers."
After a long pause he said: "I haven't been lookin' after
myself too well the last few days; but I'm goin' to make some
pancakes—with heggs—when I get home, an' to-morrow I'll
have a knuckle-bone of ham, a plum puddin' and a bottle o'
beer."

"You're going to enjoy yourself," I remarked.

"I always do when I'm at home. Why not?" He helped
himself to another lump of my brownie, and while he ate it he
rummaged amongst his assortment of small bags, one of which
contained lumps of soap, and finally tossed one across to me.

"Help yourself to any kind you like," he said.

It contained pieces of tobacco, ranging from hard corners the
size of a marble to half plugs, and broken sticks of twist, which
had evidently been contributed by dozens of good-natured folk along
the track.

Mr. Blunt then set about tidying up for town. Whilst thus
employed he sang, softly, this fragment of a song of the road:

When your clothes are tattered,
Your boots are wearing out;
When your hat is battered.
An' there's no help about;
When everything looks blue, you may
Sling your pack
Upon your back,
And tramp, tramp away!

When the road is dusty,
Flies in millions by;
When the damper's musty,
And the holes are dry;
When to tarry means decay,
Nor ill nor well,
You cannot spell,
So tramp, tramp away!

Battling on forever.
Things are always bad,
Goal draws nearer never
When you're on the pad;
Dodgin' crows from day to day,
Till you lie
Alone to die,
And tramp, tramp away!

He gathered up his belongings again, and after lighting his pipe
with a firestick, looked carefully about to see if he had missed
anything.

"Well," he said, shouldering his swag, 'I'll be
toddlin' home now."

It made me feel a little droopy watching him go, and hearing his
joyful whistle; but I passed on with a quicker step than his, now
swinging my small billy, fresh blackened from its first baptism of
fire, and camped in the vicinity of Downfall Creek. Here I made
some flapjacks on an old shovel-blade which I picked up near the
water, first scouring it well with wet sand, and then I cooked them
on it. At this early stage of my wandering career I possessed no
utensils excepting my pannikin and a one quart billycan. The latter
ere long had to do duty in the dual capacity of tea billy and meat
pot. I had a few shilling left, which I hung on to with a tenacity
that might have kept me from making a beast-of-burden of myself if
it had developed a month or two earlier.

CHAPTER III
The First Night Out—Travellers' Fires.

The first night camping out is often the longest remembered by
those who go on the wallaby. Some are jolly and eager for the
morrow, speculating where that morrow will land them, and what
fortune it will bring; others are miserable, and squat like moody
aborigines, staring at the glaring coals and weighing the prospects
carefully; and there is in both a certain sense of loneliness
engendered more by the altered conditions than by the new
environment. The novice who has been used to a soft bed discovers
as soon as he stretches himself on solid ground what an awkward
thing his hip is. He fidgets from side to side, trying to get it
into a comfortable position, and that point seems to be more
prominent than he ever dreamed of before. Many travellers never get
over the hip trouble, for which reason they make an excavation to
accommodate the protuberance, or they carry a hipper—a piece
of woolly sheepskin, a horsehair pad, or a small bag of feathers. A
good many gather leaves or grass to form a mattress. Everything
being strange, too, one lies for a long while looking at the stars,
gazing into the great, aching silence of space, listening to the
myriad sounds on his own dark plane, and thinking of home. He
thinks of other things; many scenes of his past life are reviewed,
his lost opportunities regretted, just as they are by the man going
into exile in a distant land; knowing by the experience of hundreds
before him that he may never again know a place that he can call
his home.

It was a pleasant place, quiet, with nothing lonely about it;
where I spent my first night on the track. Behind me was a
sheltering clump of tee-trees, and a little way off in front was
the northern road, running as straight as a dart across a green
flat to low, wooded hills beyond. My bluey was spread on the grass
and cheerfully blazing beside it my little camp-fire gave light
enough to read by. I had a late copy of the
"Queenslander," but I did not read much. My mind was
wandering out west, where I knew a thousand other camp-fires burned
to-night, and where I would light many another, marking my stages
across the State. There is poetry and tragedy in the traveller's
fire, in the early days, when the blacks were bad, diggers and
others, striking across country to new fields and new runs, left
their fires at sundown and went on for two or three miles before
camping for the night. The blacks, attracted by the blaze, would
often gather round the abandoned fires, and, perhaps, throw in a
shower of spears.

The swagman makes at least two fires a day—one at noon and
one at sundown. The first, the billy fire, is a midget, to boil
water for tea. Even this is methodically built. He places a stick
the thickness of his forearm on the ground, leans two lighter
pieces on it the width of the billy apart; then, between and
against the back piece, he places a handful of dry leaves, ferns,
grass, or shredded bark, with twigs and sticks on top. The billy is
stood close to it on two sticks, and the fire fed with light wood
until the water boils. The johnny-cake fire requires a good armful
of picked wood—ironbark, box, mulga, or gidgee for
preference—which is burning while the dough is being worked
up. The unburnt sticks are then put aside, the coals levelled by
stamping them lightly, and the johnnies dropped on. A blaze of good
red coals is kept going at one side, where the johnnies, as they
stiffen, are stood to toast. The damper fire should burn all night,
so as to leave a heap of clean hot ashes, not coals. A few coals
are raked over the top to keep the heat in, but there must be
enough ashes between to keep them from burning the damper. In a
working camp a round excavation is made for the oven, to
concentrate the heat and shield it from the wind. Game is roasted
by travellers in these holes without an oven. A bird is placed on a
piece of doubled wire a few inches above the coals, and a fire is
made on a sheet of tin laid over the top. Another way is to wrap
the dressed bird in a sheet of greased brown paper and roast it in
the ashes. Cakes, eggs, chops, steak, &c., can be
satisfactorily cooked in this camp-oven.

At sundown the bushman's camp-fire is lit—the most
important of all, the fire that denotes home. For this he has a
large back log, and sees that there is sufficient big wood on hand
for the night. In summer he will be satisfied if the log keeps
alight and makes coals for morning. To keep a fire in overnight, it
is covered with ashes. Glowing red coals will be found under them
in the morning, and it is only necessary to throw on a few dry
sticks to set the fire going. The best woods for fire purposes are
box, coolabah, grey gum, mulga, gidgee, forest oak, cypress pine,
ironbark, sandalwood and blackbutt. On a summer's night mosquito
fires are necessary adjuncts. They are lit at intervals with
cowdung, corkwood, green bark and leaves.

In winter-time the single fire is not a luxury. Lying beside it
you get uncomfortably hot on one side, while the other side is
freezing—your body experiencing the rigours of summer and
winter simultaneously. A fire at each side is better. Those who are
troubled with cold feet light a third to keep them warm. Under such
circumstances it does not do to be fidgety in one's sleep. Many a
one has been wakened by a blaze among his blankets, and I saw a man
kick one night till he got right down into his foot fire, and but
for a timely billy of cold tea would have been incapacitated from
walking for a week or two. A man should know his sleeping character
before trusting himself among three fires. An ex-horse trainer,
tramping out-back, was addicted to steeplechase riding in his
sleep. The nights were cold, and he had to supplement his foot-fire
with side warmers. At first he put two stakes at each side of him
to keep himself in; but he rode his dream-horses over these and
came a cropper in the fire. So he had to be content with one
warmer, and to keep out of that he tethered himself to a tree on
the opposite side. He always travelled alone. Any mate he picked
up, as soon as bed-time came, would pack up hastily and leave with
the observation that: "A fellow who ties himself up at night
must be a bit crook in the upper storey."

The blackfellow's fire is the best. It is very small, permitting
him to lie close to it all night, and to enjoy an even temperature.
"White pfeller big fool," says Murri. "Him make um
big fire—can't get close, bynbye fire go down an' white man
catch um cold." When there are several members together, they
make one big central fire, around which they squat, and one small
fire at the back of each. The common method adopted by the
aborigines to produce fire is by the friction of two sticks; though
different styles obtain in different parts of the country. One
method consists in twirling a hard-pointed stick in a shallow hole
in a particular wood, the hole being filled with dry, powdered
bark. The stick is held upright between the palms, and twirled
rapidly by rubbing the palms together. A gin sometimes kneels
before the operator and blows gently on the powdered stuff the
moment it begins to smoke; at other times he works alone, and when
the tinder begins to smoke he holds some finely-shredded bark on it
and blows it gently, then swings the bark to and fro in his hand
till it blazes. Another way of generating the required heat is by
drawing a thin-edged piece of mulga, gidgee, or other hardwood
rapidly backwards and forwards in a crack or splintered part of a
dry log. Either means is not necessarily employed very often, for a
firestick is commonly carried, swung gently in the hand to keep it
alight. A sandalwood stick is the best for this purpose, for it
will continue burning until the last bit is consumed. Many a white
hunter is also seen on the track swinging his firestick from camp
to camp. When he sits down for a spell he puts a few twigs on it to
keep it burning.

Many travellers have a fatal habit of lighting fires at the butt
of a tree. No one can judge how long it will take a tree to burn
down. A small tree may burn for days, and a big one fall in a few
hours. I once saw a burning tree rain streams of honey and melted
wax. It was a small, dead ironbark, in a projecting limb of which
there a was a bees' nest. As the fire roared up the hollow trunk
and burnt into the limb, the bees were driven out and the honey
began to pour down. We caught a lot in a billy, but it was so full
of melted wax, bee bread and burnt bees as to be unusable. Another
dangerous fire is the one built against a hollow log. Apart from
the danger of setting the bush on fire, all manner of horrible
things come crawling out as the fire eats its way into the hollows.
A Barwon native, who dearly loved his log-fire, used to surround
himself with newspaper pinned to the ground. Snakes, scorpions and
centipedes make a great noise crawling over or under dry paper;
and, being a light sleeper, he was always warned when danger
approached. In ant country he made a little trench round his nap
ground, asserting that no ant would cross it.

Bushmen are generally careful with fires; but there are some
whose carelessness has caused enormous damage and loss of life. A
few smouldering embers are left by the track side, a wind fans them
up, carries a spark into dry grass, and the result is a disastrous
bush fire. The culprit is frequently a newchum, or an immigrant
from the Paroo country, where bush fires are unknown. There is
seldom enough grass there to carry a fire, and a sojourn in such a
place makes a man careless. Glass bottles, lying in dry grass with
a hot sun shining upon them, have started many a bush fire for
which innocent swagmen have been blamed. Note that bush fires are
always plentiful on very hot days. South Australians are the most
careful people in this respect. In their State the wax match is
tapu, and anybody seen carrying a firestick there would be chased
for a lunatic, or arrested by the nearest policeman for imperilling
life and property. Nearly everybody uses safety matches, and no one
is allowed to smoke an uncovered pipe in the august presence of a
wheatfield.

Anyone who has crossed One-tree Plain, or travelled on the
Darling Downs, knows what economical firing is. There he is
fortunate if he has the posts of a wire fence from which to break
splinters and little bits of bark. Failing this, he boils his billy
with tufts of grass and the bones of dead sheep. There is generally
a strong wind blowing; and the best way to light-up is to face the
wind, holding the match low down, and striking it into the kindling
material. Lighting a fire in wet weather, when the ground is
soaked, and wood, leaves and everything else is sopping, is an art
in itself. If there are any ironbark trees, blackbutts, or
woolly-butts about, the task will be easy. Under the wet exterior
there are layers of dry, crumpled, highly-combustible material. Dry
bits of bark may be found on one side of gums and other trees; a
few dry leaves and twigs in hollow logs; a bit of greased rag may
be procurable, and, as a last resource, take a bit of bagging with
which your coat or vest is padded. Splintered pine and mulga twigs
are the quickest fire-lighters in the bush. A small fire in the
tent is cosy on a cold or wet night. A heap of short sticks close
by, a slush-lamp or a candle at your head, two or three late papers
or a good novel to read, your dog coiled against the coals, your
pipe in good going order—and not much is wanted to complete
your happiness.

Lighting a fire with the last match is a serious task. No matter
how careful you are, something is sure to go wrong. There is bound
to be a strong breeze blowing without intermission, or else a whiff
springs up just as you strike. Then it may only fiz and smoulder
away, or the head will fly off. All creation seems to be against
that one match. When you have a boxfull you can strike them as
off-handedly as you like and nothing will go amiss. They will burn
in a Townsville gale, especially when you are done with them. But
what a little puff of wind puts the last one out! It snuffs out for
no apparent reason whatever. You have your leaves, grass, bark and
twigs all nicely and carefully nested; you get down on your knees,
hold the bottom of the box close to the nest, grip the match close
to the head with thumb and fingers, and strike gently off the box
into the finest grass—and ten to one you will bump it against
something and put it out. You can then sit down and meditate on the
dullness and dreariness that broods over everything, and realise
what a comforting friend and companion is the camp-fire.

CHAPTER IV.
Matilda Breeze—Kenny Rye.

Next day I passed through Bald Hills, crossed Pine River, and
two hours later crossed the North Pine—on a narrow plank.
Being thirsty, I dropped on my hands and knees to drink; but the
water was as salt as the sea. A sturdily-built, middle-aged woman
in a poke bonnet had stood watching me. As I rose disgustedly to my
feet, she came forward.

"I was just wonderin' if you could drink Pine River
water," she said, speaking slowly. "No one about here
can."

"Then you observe I am not a walking freak, madam," I
returned.

She appeared to harbour a doubt about that point. "You're
not like an ordinary swagman," she said, musingly. "I
know you haven't been long on the track, for your blanket's new an'
your billy's new." Her eye lingered awhile on my hat.
"Are you lookin' for work?"

"What else would I be looking for! Do you think I'm
trudging about just for exercise, and to give the shoe-maker a
turn?"

She looked me up and down. "I don't know," she said.
"I thought you might only be going somewhere, or having what
they call a walkin' tour. There was a newspaper man went through
here last week, carryin' his swag and billy, and wearin' a
Johnny-come-lately hat, the same as yourself. He was spendin' his
holidays on a walkin' tour, he told me, and he was inquirin' if we
had anything special around here in the way of scenery. I took
particular notice of him because he tried to drink the river water,
too. A very affable man; but I thought it was a queer way of
enjoyin' himself. I don't suppose you're enjoyin' it?"

"No; with me it's compulsory. That makes all the
difference."

A Chinaman here came jogging down the road towards the crossing
plank. On his shoulder he carried the customary bamboo, from one
end of which his swag dangled, and from the other his tucker-bag
and campware. The sole of an old boot was lashed with greenhide and
string to each brown foot. Putting his load down, he wiped his
perspiring brow and inquired:

"You savee Blisbane?"

"Yes," I said.

"How muchee far—how long?"

"About thirty miles."

"O cli!" He picked up his load again, wobbled across
the plank, and went on at a great pace.

"A queer lot you meet on the track," the woman
remarked. "You won't lack for company when you get out a bit.
But you want to be careful who you pick up with. Swagmen are
generally good fellows, as straight and trusty as you could meet
anywhere; but there's an odd bad one among them, as there is
everywhere else, even in the highest society, as my husband says,
and you can't ways tell good eggs from bad ones by their looks. I
often wonder when I see a young fellow passin' out along here, what
will become of him. So many travellers die of thirst; some get lost
and perish, and now and again a poor unfortunate gets killed
accidentally or otherwise. What might your name be, young man, if
it isn't rude to ask?"

"Edinbury Swan," I informed her.

"I'll put it down in my traveller's book," She said.
"It's a little hobby of mine. I've got pages of names
down—of men I've talked with at this crossing or who've
called at my house just up among the trees there. A few write to me
when they get settled, and it's really wonderful where some of them
do get to. There was the Trooper, as we call him now. He camped in
our back room one wet night. Twelve months afterwards he wrote to
me from McKinley, where he was stock-ridin', and he said he'd
tramped three thousand miles before he unrolled his bluey there. I
didn't get another word of him, good, bad or indifferent, for three
years; and then one day he rode up to the house in uniform. Ah, and
a fine man he was. He'd come down with cattle, and, meetin' a chum
of his who was in the force, he went straight away and joined the
mounted police.

"It's only an odd one I get tidings of, you know. Two of
the nicest chaps I met here died of thirst out back. Seven more
were advertised for by their anxious relatives, who'd never heard
any more of them. One, it seemed, had left a wife to go to a job,
and she was tellin' him wherever he might be to take notice that
she intended to get married again. And there was Dr. Bunglo—a
wanderin' specialist he made out to be. My husband bought some
pills from him, and he reckoned they did him a lot of good, too.
Imagination works wonders with some people. It seems, in his
wanderings about the bush, this Dr. Bunglo saw the need of a mighty
pill for station hands and rouseabouts, who are always complainin'
about something or other, and imagining they've got half the
ailments under the sun, when in reality there is nothing more wrong
with them than that tired feeling. All work and no play will give
any man that complaint, as my husband says. So Dr. Bunglo set to
work; got an acre of ground in a quiet corner, and grew a ton or so
of Indian shot. You've seen them, I suppose? Round black grains
like pills, hard as nails, and grow in black pods. Then he got some
thousands of boxes, packed and labelled his product, and travelled
round with 'em in a light waggonette. His celebrated Indian pills
was the only genuine remedy for 'shearer's back,' 'barcoo,' bad
eyes and failin' memory. He was making a fortune—by degrees,
till a doctor got hold of some, and let the cat out. He posted a
camp of musterers ahead of Dr. Bunglo, and when the old fraud got
among them with his Indian grain, they made a bonfire of his cargo,
put the station brand on him so they would know him again, and
flung him into the waterhole.

"Another who came into my book was big Jim Winton. He was
very hard up, with scarcely a boot to his foot, poor man. He'd been
engaged to a nice lookin' girl, the daughter of a publican, and she
threw him over for a useless sort of a fellow who'd drawn a prize
in Tattersalls' Sweep, an' set himself up as a general storekeeper.
That business lasted about five years, and then he lost it all, and
had to take to hawkin' for a livin'. Well, Jim Winton seemed to go
to rack and ruin after bein' jilted, and he looked very weary and
down-hearted when he went through here. But he got on all right.
He's managin' a big sheep station now out west.

"And then there was Bert Mundy who was carryin' a fruit tin
for a billy can when I registered him. A month before that he was
makin' home to get married after two years' mining up north, and he
lost his two horses, everything but what he stood in, crossin' a
flooded creek. I felt real sorry for him, I did; but he said it
couldn't be helped, and he went away whistlin' as if the girl was
waitin' round the next corner, and everything ready for the
weddin'. He's a boss drover now. I often see his name in the paper.
If anything should happen to you, which I hope will be nothing
calamitous; or if you should find a nugget of gold as big as your
head, or ever do anything, out of the ordinary, I'm bound to read
about it in the paper, and I'll remember the day when you stopped
for a drink at the North Pine."

"I should like to remember you, too," I said, as a
hint to her to complete the introduction. Her hobby, as strange a
one surely as a person could take up, interested me.

"I'm Mrs. Matilda Breeze—Happy Valley, North Pine
River. You might meet my husband on the road out from Caboolture.
He's haulin' timber. Everybody knows Bob Breeze. He's a tall, thin
man, with a wisp of black beard—which I often tell him he
ought to shave off, seeing he'd improve his appearance by doin' so;
and he wears a cabbage-tree hat with a snake skin band around
it."

Curiously enough, though I did not have the honour of meeting
her husband, who happened to be cutting timber at the time. I met
his commissionaire while making a few small purchases at a store in
Caboolture, which busy little town I reached shortly after I had
said good-bye to Mrs. Breeze. The commissionaire was an aborigine,
who came in with a slab of pine, three feet long by a foot wide,
which he dumped on the counter with the explanation that it was a
letter. On one side of it was written in charcoal:

The blackfellow repeated that no money had been sent; nothing,
in fact, had been said to him about money.

Surmising that the writer did not trust his henchman, I
carefully examined the slab, and in one end discovered a plugged
augur hole. The slab was then split with an axe, and the enclosed
money, which was in shillings, was revealed to the utter amazement
of the man who had brought it.

In Caboolture also I found a mate—a heavily-built man of
middle age, with a dark-gingery beard, who was going to the
Riggings near Xanango. He had been spelling for a week in
Caboolture, mainly for the purpose of breaking the monotony of camp
and track life by the enjoyment of civilised quarters. The longing
to taste again the joys of home comes to most travellers after a
lengthy experience of primitive conditions. The majority are far
from their real homes; some of them have no homes at all, only the
memory of a parental home they left long ago, perhaps in another
State or in another land, and too often the public house is their
only substitute.

My mate's name was Kenny Rye. He was a happy, improvident
person, who made good money at times, and enjoyed it to the last
cent during his periodical spells in town, he apparently had no
other ambition than to drift simply down the river of life, and
find a temporary, glorified harbour here and there.

He had made a good impression on the townsfolk during his brief
stay in Caboolture, and it began with a little incident that
happened shortly after his arrival there. He was lying on a settee
on the hotel verandah with his hand closed tightly over the bottom
of his pocket. Some bank notes protruded from the top, and when a
deadbeat came along presently he gave a gentle but ineffectual tug
at them. He went on a few paces and returned, giving the notes
another pull in passing. Then he passed to and fro several times,
making a more determined effort each time, but the notes would not
shift. At the last tug Kenny showed signs of waking, and to make
matters look right, the deadbeat shook him and said: "Hey!
wake up. Someone will be goin' through you for that money directly.
It's nearly out of yer pocket now" "Not much," said
Kenny Rye, looking up at him with one eye; "I had a pretty
tight grip of it all the time you were pullin' at it."

A day or two afterwards he took a hard-up swagman to the store,
where he bought him a pair of boots and a new shirt, besides enough
provisions to last him a week.

When Kenny joined me he was penniless, and was provisioned for
two meals. The only effect the threatened famine had upon him was
to make him walk fast to get as far on the road as possible before
the sun went down. He was an optimist, whose spirits were
constantly buoyed up by a wonderful confidence in to-morrow. When
we left the first night camp we shared together there was only a
yawning vacancy in his nosebag. I offered to share my rations with
him, but after a casual inspection, he said: "Don't you worry
about me, mate. I've got some friends along here who'll see me
through to day; and to-morrow is bound to bring us
something."

He walked on for a few paces, and then he asked; "Did you
ever hear of a man dying of starvation on the track?"

"Don't think I have," I replied.

"Nobody has," he said, with conviction. "An'
there's a legion like us tramping through all parts of the country.
Always a legion on the march. Many of 'em haven't a cent for months
at a stretch, an' they travel thousands of miles; through settled
districts an' through regions where houses are 50 miles apart. Some
never work; they dodge work, an' keep on wanderin' about year after
year. They're sundowners, the proletariat of track society an' they
keep in good condition without drawin' much on the country's
natural resources. Plenty of travellers die for want of water, but
nobody ever throws the seven for want of tucker. It says a lot,
when you come to think of it, for the hospitality of the
bush."

Kenny's experiences on the track dated from his 18th year, when
he left home secretly, in the still hours of the night, to go to a
gold rush. Since then he had wandered from diggings to diggings,
prospecting along the way, seeking the buried wealth he had
pictured in his youthful dreams, and determined never to go back
without it. When hard up he took any kind of work he could get, but
he never tramped about looking for it. Always his destination was a
gold field, always his practised eye was on the lookout for
indications of auriferous country. Some day he hoped to make a find
that would stir humanity in its sleep. He was one of the patient,
persistent heroes of the bush, as actively and hopefully bent on
his quest then as when he stole away from home 20 years before.

"Look here, Swan," he said to me, his eyes dwelling on
a wooded ridge as though he suspected it of being a Mount Morgan in
disguise, "there are fields yet untapped as big as ever were
discovered in the past. It's improbable that a few men should so
quickly drop on the only great patches lyin' buried in an immense
country. In spite of half a century's mining, Australia hasn't been
very extensively prospected. Exceptin' in the neighbourhood of
fields with a reputation, there 've been few deep shafts sunk. The
surface has been scratched over in likely places, and that's all,
for the prospector is seldom a man of unlimited means; he is mostly
in search of alluvial, putting down a shallow shaft here and there,
if the locality has a promisin' look about it. It's usually after
the discovery of surface gold that deep sinkin' is undertaken. Some
of the richest finds, you've noticed, have been the result of
stumblin' accidentally across a small outcrop, but for which no one
might have thought of sinkin' there for centuries to come. The fact
that only an odd treasure trove hangs out a signboard of the kind
to tell where it's doin' business, makes it feasible that many
Baliarats and Bendigos are lurkin' underneath, an' perhaps with
their caps only thinly covered."

He paused in the bed of a streamlet we had reached to root in
the sand and pebbles with the toe of his boot.

"Some day," he said on resuming, "you might be
able to say you walked over it in my company."

Through the busy haunt of the timber getters we had a fine bush
road, winding through a great forest that was enlivened with the
chatter and song of birds and sweetened with the perfume of early
flowers. Often afterwards I thought of that morning. The cheeriness
that was everywhere infected us as we strode along with vigorous
steps, happy and hopeful. We had no idea where the travel would
ultimately end; yet in high spirits we trod side by side, always
side by side, and hour after hour, joying in the scenic changes and
looking with eager expectancy for the little surprises that await
the traveller on woodland ways. To me that road had a thousand
charms. I forgot at times that I was looking for such a prosaic
thing as a job.

We came opposite a neat house standing a little way back from
the road.

"Take a pull, mate." said Kenny; "I think there's
an old friend of mine here." He went round to the back of the
house, while I sat on a log and waited. In a few minutes he came
back, looking rather glum.

"Made a mistake!" was all he said, and we went on. For
a time we picked our way through the trees, whilst a dozen bullock
teams, drawing pine to Caboolture, monopolised the road.

Then he made another effort to find the old friend, visiting a
big, new house in a small clearing.

He returned shortly, looking a little ruffled.

"Drew another blank!" he said, curtly, and again we
shouldered our swags.

Timber-getters' cottages, many of them newly-built, showed
frequently through the dense forest. He called at two more places
without success. I remarked innocently that the old fellow he was
looking for had probably removed elsewhere.

"You must expect some disappointments in a new
settlement," he said. "Half of these houses are new, some
of them not finished, and in such places the people haven't got
properly settled and acquainted with the Smiths over the hill and
the Browns down the creek. They're not done borrowing the saucepan
from next door yet, an' a lot of them are 'just goin' to bake' when
you call. Only an odd one is prepared for unexpected visitors. So
you draw more blanks than prizes."

Half-an-hour's walking brought us in juxtaposition to an
old-looking place nestling in the bend of a creek. It was the only
one in sight. Kenny was alternately half stopping with an air of
uncertainty and swinging along with his gaze wandering in search of
another homestead. Presently he looked up at the sun, which was
nearing the zenith, and then back to the old place in the bend.

"He might be livin' there," he said, and dropped
his swag.

While he was away I boiled the billy and got lunch ready. He
returned with a satisfied smile, a paper parcel under his arm.

"I was nearly not goin' down there," he said, dropping
down in the shade.

"Did you find him?" I asked.

"Aye," he answered, beaming. With the joy of a
youngster who had been to a toy shop, he opened the parcel and
disclosed a sumptuous repast of bread, meat, potatoes, pumpkin, and
pudding. Then I understood who the old friend was. He lives in the
bend of many a creek, on the crest of many a hill, by the side of a
thousand roads.

Our way was now hilly and comparatively dry. All the afternoon
we were climbing up hills and jolting down hills, so that by
sundown we were fairly tired. Being unable to find water before the
light failed us, we were compelled to feel our way along in the
dark. No lights showed anywhere, except the glare of a bush fire
somewhere among the wooded hills.

"I hope we're on the right road," said Kenny as we
swung slowly round a black bank of trees. It's that blamed dark I
can't see what I'm talking about."

We were within a mile of the little town of Woodford, as we
discovered subsequently, when Kenny and I found water
simultaneously. We stepped unexpectedly off a little ledge of bank
and floundered into it. A match revealed that we were in a narrow
gully and about three yards off our proper course, the ground
thereabouts being all bare.

We unloaded at once, and shuffled around until we had kicked
against enough wood to make a fire. While it was burning up, Kenny
turned his face skywards and uttered a dismal dog-howl intended to
be imitative of a lonely dingo. A bird, startled by the awful
noise, darted out of a near tree, after which a temporary intense
silence followed.

"No dogs about," he commented, and after a pause he
assailed the welkin with a loud "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" In a
little while there came faintly through the trees the answering
crow of a rooster.

"Ah!" he said, moving off in the direction of the
sound, "found poultry, anyway. Keep a blaze goin' while I
investigate."

I stood drying myself at the fire. The sound of his heavy steps
came to me clearly until he had reached the top of a low ridge. On
the opposite slope he found a rough farm house. The back door, to
which the light of a kerosene lamp had guided him, stood partly
open. Inside, a thin, wiry-looking man sat on a stool, dancing a
baby on his knee; a woman in bedraggled skirts stood over the fire
frying something in a pan. When Kenny had made known his errand,
she left it and went into the adjoining back room, returning
presently with something bulky wrapped in newspaper and tied with
twine.

As he trudged back to the blazing beacon by the gully he
speculated with pleasant anticipations as to the nature of the
largess. He was shivering with cold, for these August nights were
yet wintry. He changed into dry clothes, hanging his wet ones round
the fire, before he sat down. Then he cut the bindings of his
parcel with his jack knife, and unwound the several sheets of paper
with the air of a man who was going to enjoy himself.

The next instant his manner underwent a lightning change. The
sight of the contents seemed to momentarily paralyse him. He sat
motionless, his hands grasping the last folds of paper, his eyes
fixed as if fascinated on seven raw potatoes. There was nothing
else.

"Been doing a bit of farming?" I observed, as he
seemed to have forgotten me. He did not speak; he was too intent on
studying the potatoes.

"Better have some tea, Kenny," I said, after a
five-minutes interval. "These spuds will go very well
to-morrow with the bit of salt beef I've got."

Kenny reached for his pannikin. "I was wonderin' if that
woman laughed," he said; and then he proceeded with his meal
in thoughtful silence.

A little later we had spread our blankets, and were about to
turn in when the bush fire, fanned by a gentle wind, came swooping
over the northern hill. We did not notice till it got close to us
that the grass, though short, was thick and dry; and we had to arm
ourselves with bushes and fight it to save our camp.

From Woodford the country was more hilly, but better watered.
Bush fires raged around us, and thick smoke curled up through the
tall ironbarks, at times drifting in blinding clouds across the
track.

We reached Kilkoy at dusk, and carefully deposited ourselves
under an adjacent tree. In the grey dawn we were awakened by a
belated selector returning home from a dance and card party. He was
on his knees, with his bridle reins over his arm, scraping in with
his hand all the leaves, twigs, and loose grass around our fire for
a radius of 10 feet. He explained that many selectors had been
burnt out by the prevailing grass fires, and he feared for the
safety of his own place. He hoped we would put our inoffensive
little fire very much out before leaving, and after it was out
empty half of Sheep Station Creek on to it lest the wind should fan
it up again. He hunted up a battered jam-tin and brought it to us
for the purpose, saying that there was always a danger if the
heated ground was not cooled with plentiful ablutions of water. He
hoped also that we would leave no bottles lying about, as the sun
had a way of lighting grass with them.

He talked enthusiastically of his little homestead selection,
where he lived for short periods when not engaged at droving or
other stock work. He was a small, withered-looking man, registered
in his lovable infancy as William Willet, and popularly known in
his declining age as "Brumby Bill."

Having warmed himself, he raked in another leaf, picked up a
tiny blade of grass he had missed, gave us some more instructions
how to put the fire out, mounted his horse, and galloped away.

Our road passed within stone-throw of his unpretentious little
dwelling, and after a little more than an hour's walk we came upon
him standing by some dead brush and watching a bush fire
approaching it across a paddock. He asked us to stop until he burnt
the brush, as it was dangerously near his hut and he wanted it
clear before the big blaze got round him.

"I've been trying hard to save the grass for my
stock," he said, "but most of it will have to go now. The
whole country's alight!"

"Where's your stock?" I asked him.

"Tied up under the tree there, with the saddle
on."

The burning-off occupied him an hour, after which he invited us
to the privacy of his home. It was a one-roomed hut, with slab
walls and shingle roof. Its only furniture was a stool, a rough
table, and a stretcher made of saplings and bags. Outside was a tin
dish on a block, and tacked on the wall above it was a sardine-tin
containing soap. Everything was eloquent of the easy going nature
and improvidence of "Brumby." But he was a genial host,
and during dinner, which consisted of damper and meat and black
tea, he related some wonderful feats, and episodes of his youthful
days.

Mr. Willet was a stockman of ye olden time. Running brumbies one
day with Charlie Flitt, he galloped into a clump of timber which
was so thick that at one spot the only opening was through the fork
of a tree.

"I could have pulled up," he said, "but no
bloomin' brumby ever got away from me once I set him, an' that lot
wasn't goin' to best me for no jumped-up vegetable in Queensland.
Put Blue Streak at it, an' he went up like a rocket an' through as
clean's a whistle. Just shaved a bit of loose bark oft' each side
with me knees. Flitt followed on Dizzy Dick, but Dizzy was a bit
fat an' jammed in the fork of the tree. I yarded the brumbies
single handed, an' then went back an' levered Charlie out with a
long pole. Dizzy 'ad 'urt himself struggling an' I 'ad to shoot
'im. People often wondered after how the skeleton came to be
standin' away up in the tree. Stranded in a flood, they
reckoned."

"Brumby," concluded with a laugh—a dry cackle
that was like the rattle of a loose buggy-wheel.

Before we left, "Brumby" told us how to get to
Colinton. "Keep this track till you hit a fence. Take that on
your right shoulder an' carry it along to a crick. You leave the
fence there an' put the crick on your back, an' by-an'-by you'll
pick up a fence on your left shoulder, an' you'll run that into a
hill. Leave it there, an' make a bee-line west-by-south till you
strike the river. Just across that you'll drop on to a metalled
road; leave the river there, an' take the road on to
Colinton."

He was going back to his "stock," still patiently
standing under the tree, and as we walked away he broke into an old
bush melody:

Humping your drum
Is bad after rum
It's wearing your young life away!

It was a send-off that considerably dampened my spirits, for I
felt at the time that my young life was being wasted, if I was not
exactly wearing it out.

On and on we trudged, through richly grassed country where, here
and there, great horned cattle ran rings around us as we passed
along. Our road had dwindled into a faint bridle-track, which
eventually gave out, leaving us only an old blazed-tree line. This
led us over many beautiful hills and across many perennial streams.
On the top of the last hill we halted awhile, admiring the beauty
of the Arcadian view. Before us was a broad flat, dotted with a few
ring barked trees that stood like gaunt sentinels over the feeding
cattle. Around it coursed the Brisbane River, and beyond this, on a
low ridge backed by a dark mass of foliage, was Colinton
homestead.

Our admiration slumped a little when we got down to the ford,
for the water was waist-deep and cold; and fording a cold river,
dressed only in a bulky swag and a straw hat, and holding up a
billy in one hand and a pair of boots in the other, was anything
but a dignified proceeding.

In the friendly twilight, after scrambling painfully through a
hedge of briar roses, we arrived at the humble residence of Billy
Bland.

Here I said good-bye to Kenny Rye, who went to the men's hut,
and next morning he continued on his way to Nanango.

Bland's place was an old three-roomed cottage, built of slabs
and shingles. At one end was the family bedroom; at the other end
was a lumber-room, where the milk, meat, harness, and saddles were
kept. A speckly hen and a white pullet also laid there. The
generally-useful room where we dined was in the centre. It was
furnished with a table, carved all round with boundary riders'
initials, two stools, and a sofa. A broom, which appeared to be
used principally as a weapon against intruding fowls, stood in one
corner, and a stockwhip, hanging on a nail, was the only wall
decoration. I slept on the sofa, and as my host went to work early
I had to get up earlier still to allow Mrs. Bland to come out to
get his breakfast ready. I suggested that the lumber-room would be
more convenient, but Billy said a bed couldn't be made there
without shifting the nests, and, in any case, if I didn't get up
early, my presence there would be disturbing to the hens.

Billy was a cynically-humorous person, a man who had seen better
days, and had drifted into the rough and careless habits so common
among men who knock about the bush. He was good company when he had
nothing to read; but given a good novel or a book of verse, he
would lie on his back for hours, his pipe in full blast, absorbing
the literature. A chief characteristic of his was mimicking others;
especially people with a peculiar style of speech. At times he
would imitate one until he fell unconsciously into that person's
way of speaking. His particular study at the time I was sharing his
humble quarters was a superior overseer, and that overseer spoke to
me so often through Billy's mouth that I began to catch the habit
myself.

"On most squattages," he said, in reference to my
sleeping apartment, "there's a lonely little place away by
itself, like a dead-house or a quarantine depot, if you understand
me, for the special accommodation of uncommercial travellers. As a
rule, the squatter built it years ago, when men were scarce, and
not so given to camping out. It kept strangers away from the sheds
and stables, and aloof from the men's hut. The only difference
between the two huts is that either of them is worse than the other
to the respective occupants. Most travellers in the uncommercial
line nowadays prefer to camp out. Given a tree, a bit of grass for
a hipper, a waterhole and a fire, and they're at home. For a
reasonably civilised and intellectual person, if you understand me,
the average hut is an abomination. The occupants are good fellows,
but some of them are awful bores. There's Bullocky Bill,
blatherskiting for hours about what Strawberry and Rattler can do;
and Sam, the blacksmith, lecturing on the mending of cracked
saucepans; the boundary-rider gassing as to how long the water will
last in the Spare-me-days' Tank. If there was a sheep bogged in the
tank he will be a solid hour relating how he pulled it out.

'' 'Ever been to Brisbane?' I once asked a boundary hand, by way
of a change.

'' 'Well, no,' he said, 'but I was dashed near goin' there once.
Pulled up at Winkle's, and got paralytic.' That's some people's
ambition, to get paralytic occasionally, and make history of it in
the hut on Skeleton Creek or Dead Man's Hole. It's mostly vulgar
'shop' talk; nothing intellectual, if you understand me. There's
always someone wanting to get a pitch on, or to sing 'The Old Bark
Hut,' or the 'Old Homestead,' just as you're absorbed in Shelley or
Rossetti. Some want the door shut; some want it open; and there's
always a row over the slush-lamp. Some can't sleep with the light
burning; others can't smoke in the dark. Someone blows it out;
voices call him a cow; and then someone lights it again. It jars on
one's finer senses, if you understand me.

"I've waltzed Matilda more than once myself," he went
on. "We're all in the glue pot so far as that's concerned. One
wet night found me with an old fellow under a lean-to. We were on a
slope, and towards midnight he complained of water running in.
'Ain't you gettin' wet?' he asked, his teeth chattering. No; I was
quite dry. 'Jumpin'' Jerusalem!' he gasped, 'the whole seethin'
Murrumbidgee agin' me.' He raised himself, the water rushed
through, and I in turn was swamped. 'That was unneighbourly. Jack.'
I said to him. 'You couldn't have got any wetter, so what was the
use of wetting me?' 'What are you givin' us?' he returned. 'Do you
take me for a bloomin' dam?' We sat the rest of the night leaning
against one another.

"It's an interesting business, taken all in all; but
there's nothing of the supremely sublime in it, if you understand
me."

CHAPTER VI.
Nanango—Arty the Tinker—Bush Fires.

On Monday, August 19, I set out alone from Colinton on my long
tramp across the Queensland bush. Two lines of a song that Bland
had sung the night before ran in my mind:

On the wild Barcoo, and the Flinders, too,
A thousand miles away!

It was for the Barcoo I shaped my course. Three little girls saw
me to the first slip rails, a mile distant. One took my tucker bag,
another found amusement in carrying my billycan. Then came the last
good-byes, and the girls, climbing on to the fence, watched me
until I had disappeared from their view among the wooded hills.

Though this was my first experience as a hatter on the track, I
did not yet feel lonely, for the country was familiar. I had
travelled from Mt. Lindsay to Taromeo two years earlier, and had
thence ridden to New England across the bleak Darling Downs, where
one had to hold up a saddle-cloth to prevent the flour blowing away
while the other made johnny-cakes, and where we had to pull
splinters off the wire-fence posts to make a fire. Across by the
Condamine and Macintyre too was a hard journey; but on the Severn
River we gave our horses a spell, and lived three weeks on bream
and Murray cod.

My thoughts were so busy all the morning that I walked 13 miles
before I stopped for lunch. By a little rippling stream, and under
a clump of wattle, I rested for a couple of hours. From here to
Taromeo was an easy jaunt—through the great blackbutt
country, where stood in all its primeval glory undulating miles of
magnificent scrub and forest. Suddenly there came a break, and I
saw a lawn-like clearing. At the far side, on the bank of a rocky
creek, with dark, lofty hills for a background, was the cosy
homestead of Taromeo. All hands were away mustering; so I took
possession of the men's hut and made myself comfortable.

I left it early next morning, and struck out on the Nanango
road. It was a good road for walking, and I stepped along at a
brisk pace for three hours. Then came stony, mountainous country,
where one is everlastingly climbing up hills and climbing down
again, hoping every one is the last one, and finds on gaining the
top, another and yet another before him. The road that you can see
a long way ahead, winding over long, grey hills, is a dreary road
to travel. You look back and thank your stars that you have crossed
so many steep ridges; then you look ahead, and the prospect nearly
breaks your heart. I like that road which has many a turning
through thick timber; you never know what might be waiting for you
round the corner, and the expectation helps a man along. But in
hilly country you know you have to climb that hill which you saw
from the last one before you can expect anything else.

Out of the hills I came to Nanango, a little mining-grazing town
on an off shoot of Barambah Creek, which is a tributary of the
Burnett River. The Nanango diggings were in a scrub a mile out.
There were also the Seven Mile diggings and the Cooyar Creek
diggings. Gold had been found in several other localities about
Nanango, and the more sanguine of the inhabitants were expectant of
a boom time for their little town.

Having insufficient money to go prospecting with, and knowing no
one from whom to get information, I left the various mines severely
alone. I also left the town.

I took the Taabinga road, and towards sundown arrived at a small
hut occupied by a grizzled hatter, a quaint individual known as
Arty-the-Tinker. He was middle-aged, and had small fierce-looking
eyes and a fuzzy beard that pointed in all directions except north.
He told me that the nearest water was in a creek two miles ahead. I
hurried away to find it before dark. When I had gone a mile I heard
him cooeeing. Then I saw him beckoning, and went back.

"Where are you goin'?" he asked, leaning on the
fence.

"To the creek," I answered.

"Ain't there another day to-morrer?" he demanded,
fiercely.

I admitted that there would be for most of us.

"Well, hang it, what are yer in such a tearin' hurry
for?"

He turned away as he spoke, and went into the hut. I sat down
outside, a little puzzled.

Presently he came out again, looking fiercer than ever.

"Why the deuce don't you come in?"

"Thank you," I said, following him smartly. "I've
walked 22 miles to-day, and feel a bit tired."

"Pooh!" he said. "That's a mere stroll. I'd think
nothing of 40 miles even now, an' carry a big swag at
that."

I did not doubt that he could do it for one day; but record
tramps are not done every day. An old Warrego battler, known as the
"Rainmaker," in one day trudged from Eulo to Cunnamulla,
a good 50 miles; but he could not repeat the performance the second
day. A little man named Sam Smith stepped the 45 miles from
Deniliquin to Echuca in nine and a half hours, with a 28lb. swag,
and a bottle of whisky for refreshments; and a digger, hurrying to
Mt. Browse during rush time, in one day went from Hungerford to
Hamilton's Hut, on the Queensland border, a hard 57 miles. His load
was a digger's pick, a shovel, dish, billy, tucker, and a camp
oven. But slower men passed him before the journey's end, and when
he didn't turn up they sent a dray out for him, and brought him to
the field in a pretty bad way.

I was ushered into a mean, low little shanty containing two
rooms. The front one was no more than 6 feet wide, and had a
fireplace at one end. Its only furniture was a narrow table affixed
to the wall, a sitting-block, a stool, and a shelf. The other was a
bedroom, which I was not invited to inspect; he carefully shut the
door when he passed in or out, so that I could not peep into it. I
sat on the block, while Arty poked up the fire and slung the
billy.

In the course of conversation I learnt that his was a very small
block of land, which he had taken up for the sake of having a home
to go to when out of collar. He ran a fence around it to prevent
other people's stock from purloining his grass. Having no cattle or
horses of his own, and a great dread of snakes and casual fires, he
had frequently to burn it off. His only live stock consisted of
nine hens and two roosters. One hen—Cluckin' Biddy—had
six chickens. She did have seven, but the little black chick with a
white spot on its left ear died from cramp (so far as he could make
out from the almanac).

When I remarked that there was something of the
dog-in-the-manger principle about him in respect to his grass, he
explained that he wanted it for fattening grasshoppers, as that was
all his fowls had to live on. Cattle were destructive. Besides
eating the juiciest grass, they squashed the best of his stud
grasshoppers with their big hoofs, or overlaid them when they
camped, and the black hen and the speckly rooster suffered in
consequence.

"Why don't you keep pigs?" I asked.

"What will I feed 'em on?" he demanded.

"Make a garden and grow pumpkins."

"An' have 'em stole while I'm away! I've got to go out
sometimes for months. This place won't keep me. It's only a 'ome.
Last time I was away me door was smashed in, an' the place
ransacked. Me brotherly neighbours did that. Where would the
pumpkins be? Bust 'em! they'd shake the eye out of your head. They
even steal me grasshoppers to fish with!"

"Where do they live?" I asked.

"In the grass. Dash it all?"

"I mean the neighbours," I hastened to explain.

"Up the creek about 10 mile."

His fierce little eyes fairly glittered as he slewed to the
fire, and threw one leg across the other. Just then the billy
boiled over.

The supper was put on the table, and the meal eaten in silence.
I tried once or twice to start a conversation, but not one word
would he utter. When he had washed up, however, he sat down by the
fire and became more amiable.

The conversation drifted to the subject of matrimony, his lonely
state having prompted me to make some tentative observations
pertaining to it.

"I've known plenty o' women I could ha' married," he
said, "but none of 'em was my equal."

"What do you call your equal?"

"I'll tell you what I call my equal," he said.
Evidently he did not like the way I spoke. "I've got a bit o'
ground an' some hens."

''And some chickens," I added.

"They'll be hens by-n'-bye, won't they?' he demanded.

"Certainly— if they don't be roosters, and nothing
happens to their feet."

"An' what if anything 'appens to their feet?"

"In that case they wouldn't be able to run grasshoppers
down."

His little eyes looked like glow-worms in the faint twilight,
and he took several long pulls at his pipe before he resumed.

"Say I'm worth two 'undred pound. I look on marriage as a
business partnership 'tween man an' woman. They're the firm. So if
a man puts two 'undred quid into it the woman should put two
'undred quid into it. If she can't do that she ain't his
equal."

"You forget that woman is man's helpmate." I
protested.

"Isn't he her helpmate? Doesn't he help her a sight more 'n
she helps him?"

"Not always. Her duties are hard and constant; her hours
are half as long again as his; and is not the love of a good woman
recompense enough for your paltry outlay?"

He turned on me furiously. "Hasn't she the love of a good
man in return? Woman wants a man's love as much as, if not more
than, man wants woman's. There's an old rhyme what says, 'Love is
of man's life a part; 'tis woman's whole existence!' "

"Which shows that man possesses more of the brute, and that
woman is, therefore, the superior being. That being so, it behoves
man to bring something more than himself into the partnership to
equalise things."

"If I'm a pauper," he said, "an' she's a pauper,
we're equal. If I've two 'undred pound an' she's nothing, are we
still equal?"

"Consequentially—no. She may still be your
superior."

"Ugh! What's the use o' talkin'!" he cried, irritably.
"Young fellers of your age think of nothing but beauty. If
she's got a pretty face an' a neat ankle, an' a wasp-like waist,
you reckon it's dowry enough. But beauty will never captivate me. I
want me equal!"

Despite our various differences, the old fellow took kindly to
me, and suggested that I might do worse than stay a few days at his
shanty. Something might turn up in the meantime. There was nothing
to be gained by always rushing ahead; I might be running away from
work instead of running into it.

Arty was a tinsmith by trade, and he had a tank to make for a
neighbouring selector. To properly rivet this together required a
man inside and a man outside; and as Arty could not be on both
sides at once, he engaged me to assist him.

The contract was completed in one day. Between the dinning
intervals of hammering we were talking of the squattages and roads
out west, and I remarked that I might get a lift as far as
Taabinga. He said I might wait till doomsday, as few vehicles
traversed that road. Whilst we were at tea, however, I noticed a
buggy passing towards Nanango.

"There's a trap going along there now," I informed
him.

"Well," he snapped, "ain't there a road
there?"

After that I made no further effort to converse with him at meal
times. To talk then was apparently against his creed.

The next couple of days were spent splitting posts and rails and
doing odd jobs about the place. My first task every morning before
breakfast was carrying two big buckets of water from a gully
outside his boundary, and nearly a mile from the hut. The track
zig-zagged over two low hills and through half-a-mile of long
grass. The last task, after we knocked off work in the paddock, was
humping a log home for the evening fire.

About noon on Saturday we noticed dense clouds of smoke that
encompassed the whole western horizon. Within an hour a line of
flame crossed the nearest ridge, and soon swept the intervening
flat. Arty gathered up some old bags.

"Are you going to muster the grasshoppers?" I
asked.

"Lord help 'em!" he said. "Me poor fowls will
starve."

He threw me a bag, and we went down to the back fence, the
alignment of which was strewn with dry bark, logs, and small wood
that had dropped from the ringbarked trees. For three hours we were
raking away rubbish and protecting that precious fence. The fire
got through, but as the grass was short around Arty's domicile he
allowed it to burn. I reminded him of his grasshoppers. He said
there would be enough food along the top for them till the grass
grew. They would get fat and multiply on the young stuff.

"Supposing they get out of the paddock?" I
suggested.

"Can't they get back again?" he snapped.

It was after sundown when we left off. And while the billy was
boiling he paid me 15s for the four days' work I had done. After
tea he brought out guns and invited me to an hour's ramble along
the ridge. He wanted to get some possum-skins before the cold
weather was over to make a rug.

The first possum we sighted was perched on a post of the back
fence—a capital shot for a boy with a catapult. Arty stood
about 10 yards off, and let fly. The possum sprang off the post,
and ran up a tree, from a dark limb of which it purred mockingly at
Arty.

"Fust thing I ever missed in me life!" he said, in a
surprised sort of way. "A flamin' moth bobbed in me eye just
as I pulled. They do be bobbin' about a lot to night," he
added, apologetically.

He started to re-load under the tree while I mooned the possum.
Catching it in a splendid position, without giving a thought to my
mate, I let drive. Down it came thump on to the old fellow's head.
It was mortally wounded, and for a few seconds clung desperately to
his neck. Arty, bent double and pivoting round and round, roared
lustily for help. I caught it by the tail and pulled it off, to the
accompaniment of an ear-splitting yell.

Arty danced about for a bit, brushing his neck, and fuming and
spluttering the while. Then he turned on to me ferociously.

"Gimme that gun, an' get out o' me paddock!"

Saying which, he snatched the weapon from my hand, and strode
rapidly away in the direction of home.

When I reached the hut I found my swag and billy, lying outside,
and the door shut, and bolted. I gathered them up, and in the
moonlight went on to the creek, even though there was another day
to-morrow.

CHAPTER VII.
Mixed. Drinks—A Pleasant Night at Taabinga— A Long
Stage to Burrandowan.

I camped over Sunday by the creek; for though all days may seem
alike on the track, very few swagmen travel on the Sabbath if they
can help it. I had no tent, there was no house in sight; so I spent
the long day under a tree.

On resuming, the first thing that enlivened my way was a roan
cow with sunken eyes, and ribbed like a concertina, which charged
me at Barker's Creek. I sprang aside, and she struck the ground
with her horns, and turning over, broke her neck. Another attempted
to turn sharp round to run away, but tripped over her own hoofs and
fell. They had passed through a hard winter, and the spring had not
yet worked much improvement. This condition of the pastoral
industry thereabouts gave no promise of lucrative employment in the
near future, for the evident losses would incline the economising
squatter to shorten hands rather than to increase his wages
account.

A sandy watercourse pulled me up for lunch. What little water it
contained was covered with a yellow scum, and half-buried by the
edge of the pool were some bovine bones. I strained and boiled and
skimmed my drinking supply, not only as a precaution against the
apparent unwholesomeness, but out of consideration for the probable
variety and condition of my predecessors—dogs that lapped it
and rolled in it; the old gin who bathed her tired feet in it;
sheep with cancered lips, oxen with pleuro-pneumonia. crows and
hawks with beaks freshly stained with some putrid carcase. I have
seen them all at different holes, and there was nothing to prevent
the lot visiting this one.

Considering the awful water he has frequently to drink in dry
times, it is marvellous how the traveller outback remains immune
from sickness, from hydatids and kindred diseases. He swallows all
sorts of stagnant water, of various colours from lime-white to jet
back, much of it teeming with insects. In hot weather, when pools
are few and far between, he comes to each with a ravenous thirst,
and not infrequently drops on all fours and drinks as his horse
drinks. Each water has its own particular taste. One has such a
decided cow-yard flavour that he tries to spit out the taste of it
and hurries to get his pipe alight. Another is so impregnated with
eucalyptus that it seems more like a dose of medicine than a plain
drink; while a third is simply gidgee tea, a course of which gives
him the barcoo. Then there are the mineral waters, each one
asserting its own little peculiarity on a person who is not used to
it.

About mid-afternoon I had the pleasure of drinking at a small
running stream. It was spring water, clear as crystal, but of a
rather sweetish taste. I attributed this to the presence of
minerals. I also noticed some fibrous particles floating down,
which I supposed to be the roots of herbs. Going towards the spring
just afterwards, I discovered a dead cow lying lengthwise in the
middle of the course. She was pretty well washed out, and the water
was running through her—a sort of tunnel, as it were. What I
had mistaken for herbage roots were being dislodged from the more
ancient parts of her.

I reached Taabinga in time for tea, to which Mrs. Johnson, the
cook, kindly invited me. We were joined by Mary, a buxom little
housemaid, and Sam, a good-hearted, easy-going young man who
"pottered about the place." They were the only three
persons at the homestead, the others were away mustering on a
distant part of the run.

We played cards till 9, and finished up with tea and cake. Sam
and I then repaired to the men's hut, a domicile that might be
mildly described as rough and unkempt; a food storehouse for
bacteria, where one might contract any kind of disease without much
trouble. The front room was allotted to me. Sam occupied the other.
He advised me to move cautiously lest I should fall over the
kerosene tin or the pack-saddle. They were somewhere about the
floor. The horse-boy had left them there before he went mustering a
week ago. He never saw such an untidy young imp.

Despite precautions I stumbled against something. A light
revealed the withered hind leg of a foal, which had died at the
back of the stockyard. The dog had dragged it in the day before
yesterday. He would have to tie that dog up.

Sam lit the slush-lamp—a mustard tin on a tin plate. Both
were covered with filthy black fat that had boiled over. Whilst it
fizzled and spluttered I surveyed my apartment. It contained a bag
bunk, the aforementioned kerosene tin and pack-saddle, and the
foal's leg. That was all.

There being no back door, the dog came in several times to gnaw
at the leg, and at last I had to get up and haul it outside. Then
Sam got the nightmare, to remedy which I transferred the
kerosene-tin into his apartment with a great clatter. Sleep was
scarce, for in the dim dawn he made a fresh disturbance putting his
boots on. They seemed to require a lot of stamping on the floor to
fit his feet into them.

Acting on information received from Samuel at breakfast time,
that a new selector living nine miles down the creek wanted a man,
I propelled myself resolutely in pursuit of the billet, only to
discover a tent, standing alone in the wilderness, which had not
been inhabited for at least two days. I had therefore to retrace my
steps; and after walking 18 miles—for nothing more than to
get a tired feeling—I found myself back at the cross roads,
camped in sight of Taabinga homestead.

Dingoes were plentiful, bold and inquisitive, coming at times
into the firelight. 'Possums scampered up and down the tree at my
head; koalas were snorting and snoring, the squirrels squealing
over the flat by the creek; and along the ridge the curlews were
crying with weird cadence. It was bitterly cold, too, and I spent a
good part of the night stoking.

I was awakened at sunrise by crows and kurrawongs pecking at my
feet. Looking up, I saw hundreds of birds around me, and in the
tree above me, and from all directions more were flocking in with
lusty carrion cries that call mates to feast upon a
newly-discovered corpse. They had mistaken me for a dead man, and
were having a preliminary corroboree over me. Luckily my face was
covered. Those birds have a penchant for eyes. I have seen sheep
wandering helplessly about with both eyes pecked out, the victims
of crows, or properly ravens. These haunt a sick or starving beast,
waiting for the animal to get down for the last time. They follow
the dingoes, flying from tree to tree, knowing well they will come
in for a feast when the canine has slain his prey and satisfied his
own hunger. I shuddered as I saw the black scavengers hopping away,
looking startled and surprised, and utterly unable to comprehend
the situation. One sharp dig through the eyelid, and there would
have been no need afterwards to shut that eye to see straight with
the other.

The Burrandowan road was fair walking, but it wasn't cheerful by
any means, for it is a lonely place where no one lives. Only thick
forests of ironbark and wild apple trees to gaze upon, with an odd
stone curlew trotting about to relieve the monotony.

I did not meet a soul all day, and began to fear there would be
a tobacco famine in my vicinity if things did not improve; neither
did I pass a house till sundown, and that stood a long way off the
road. I ended my day's journey of 22 miles just beyond it. A heap
of surplus wood, left by drovers, was a chuck-in, and a piece of
curled bark which they had used for a baking board served me for a
similar purpose. Afterwards I remembered that a man had been
poisoned through using picked-up baking boards. Poisoners
frequently use the same kind for making baits on. Which may account
for many a mysterious death by the roadside.

August 19.—A couple of hours after starting from camp I
lost the alleged road, and had to leave my swag under a tree while
I looked around. It was a road but little used, and hard to follow.
In places there was no road at all. The only thing to do in such
cases is to go on blindly in the direction you think it runs till
you pick it up again—or lose it altogether. It makes one feel
uneasy, and after wasting a considerable amount of his daily
allowance of energy, there is the annoying conviction that he has
not done himself justice—that he ought to be many miles
farther on. The veteran sundowner takes no account of time, but
even he objects to walking "round a gum tree." He would
rather lie under it.

However, after a lot of beating about I got on the road again. I
had carried half a billy of cold tea from camp, and on returning to
my swag found it being sampled by a big goanna. It was so big and
ugly that one might be excused for mistaking it for a crocodile.
Yet it seemed to have been somebody's pet, for it wore a strap,
like a dog's collar, round its neck. I chased it up a tree, and
threw the remains of the tea after it. Then I walked round and
round the tree to see if I could beat it, but it kept pace with me,
and with a quick side motion circumnavigated that tree in such a
masterly manner that I could not see so much as a claw. Then I
doubled back, and just caught a glimpse of it coming round. It
poked its tongue out rapidly, as though resenting this trick, and
skedaddled back the other way.

Towards noon I met Smith of the "Half-way House," and
on my mentioning the incident to him he said:

"Just as well you didn't kill it; that goanna belongs to
me."

"Belongs to you?" I repeated.

He nodded. "I lost three of them last week."

"What do you do with goannas?" I inquired.

"I use 'em for drawin' wood an' water. Usually drive a
couple o' dozen, harnessed in pairs. Best team in creation for
takin' a load up a pinch—they 'ave such splendid claws for
gravel-scratching.

He may have been a liar, and he may not. There are some queer
cranks in wide spaces. Some find amusement in capturing 'possums
and branding them, after which they let them go again. Branded and
ear-marked kangaroos and wallabies are often met with in the bush.
Another practice is to pluck a crow, then send him adrift to act as
a scare. The other crows will either immediately quit his
neighbourhood, or fall upon and murder him.

The sight of Burrandowan was refreshing, and at 4 o'clock by the
sun I arrived on the scene—with expectations, for the place
was commodious, prosperous, and promising. There were many
buildings, and the first I hit was the carpenter's shop. The
carpenter was leaning against the doorpost looking out upon a
ringbarked flat. At the end of the shop was a small horse yard. A
boy was sitting in it holding a horse, whilst two men sat on the
rails and talked about it. In the garden beyond was an old fellow
leaning on a shovel and smoking a pipe.

My expectations at this juncture were completely reversed. It is
generally a blue duck when you see everybody idle.

I had just said "good day" to the carpenter, and got a
grunt from him, when the boss came out. The carpenter began to tap
with his hammer, the men slipped off the rails, the boy jerked the
halter and sang out "Wey" to the horse, and the old
gardener spat on his hands and swung the shovel at a small clod.
The boss was a ruddy-faced, corpulent old gentleman, with a
snow-white beard, and a limp in his off-side leg. He moved very
slowly, and used a walking stick.

"Good afternoon," I said. "Any chance of a
job?"

"None what-ever!" There was a peculiar firmness about
the set of his lips when he had said it, as though he were
semi-conscious of some dramatic effect. "I've got too many men
now."

At this point the yard became obscured in dust, the carpenter
was making a great noise with his hammer, and the gardener was
digging as if he meant to turn the earth upside down.

For a moment or two the old gentleman leaned on his stick and
scratched his head.

"Which way have you come?" he asked me then.

"From Taabinga," I replied.

"Where did you light your last fire?"

"Near Smith's. I put it out before I left."

"How did you put it out?"

"Threw water on it."

"H'm. You think you put it out. Very often there are coals
left. The first breeze fans them up, and away goes my grass. Do you
see that smoke across the hills? That's my grass burning. The
result of swagmen leaving fires behind them. I've got to
suffer."

"I'm always very careful with fire," I protested.

"You can't be too careful," he said. "Bring your
bags and I'll give you something. Not much, mind you—"
turning half round. "Just enough to take you off my
grass."

With all his grumpiness he was a good hearted man, and I liked
him for his frankness and bluff manner. In the store he asked as an
afterthought:

"What sort of work are you looking for?"

"Anything," I answered eagerly.

"Anything!" he repeated. "That means
nothing—always!"

I regretted afterwards that I did not "argue the
point." I might have convinced him that the services which I
was so assiduously hawking about with a view to leasing at
reasonable rates were really of marketable value. It seemed hard
that a strong healthy young man should go begging about the country
to be made use of, and no one could find a use for him. My only
utility at present was to assist in preventing the roads from being
overgrown with grass so that other travellers might not get
lost.

CHAPTER VIII.
A Man from Aramac. — Bush Cook's.—"Shovelling
Archie."

From Burradowan I steered for Bundooma, an easy stage of 18
miles, by a fairly level track, winding through giant timber.

Midway I met an elderly one-eyed man, who was as dry and
withered looking as a lambskin on a sun-baked plain. His clothes
were a mass of patches, with a few holes here and there for
ventilation. He had half a yard of tying-wire round one boot to
keep it together, and a piece of line wire thrust through the toe
of the other, and twitched to keep the boot from gaping. The rim of
his hat was suspended from the crown with twine, "to keep it
from floppin' about me ears," he explained. Also about 30
small corks, strung on thread, dangled all round under the rim.
When a fly lit on his nose he shook his head, and the resultant
swinging and bumping of the corks dispersed the pest.

"The best fly-veil yer can 'ave," he said, taking the
hat off momentarily to admire his ingenuity.

He was driving a melancholy-looking horse, which was too poor to
throw a respectable shadow. It carried the pack; a few odds and
ends in a wallet, secured with a greenhide surcingle. The halter
was made of hide, rope, twine, wire and bootlaces.

"I 'ad a week's work above Aramac," he informed me,
"an' I got that through workin' a p'int on a skinflint. I
wanted a trifle from the store to go on with, an' when I mentioned
it to him, he says to me: 'There's a axe an' a heap o' wood over
there. You apply one to the other, my man, an' apply to me after,'
he says. I went ahead, an' slogged away till half the heap was
chopped up. Then I hunted him up again. 'Got yer bags?' he says,
quite pleased. 'Never mind the bags jes' now,' I says; 'pay me
wages first.' 'Your wages!' says he. 'Jes' so,' says I. 'I s'pose
you know something of the Masters and Servants' Act?' says I. 'But,
man,' says he, 'I didn't put you on!' 'You ordered me to cut wood,'
I says, 'an' I cut wood—which entitles me to a week's wages,'
I says, 'or a week's notice in lieu thereof. Your sort's been
gettin' at my sort too long with yer bloomin' woodheaps. Pay me a
pound now, or keep me the week,' I says. He took a stroll round the
woodheap, thinkin' it out. 'What's your name?' he says. 'Jimmy
Nann,' says I. 'Well, Jimmy,' he says, 'I won't want you any more
after this week.' 'All right, boss,' I says. 'What 'ill I busy
meself at now?' 'Oh, cut some more d— wood,' he says, an'
walked off.

"That was five months ago, an' I 'aven't done a tap since.
I'm gettin' that way now that I feel ashamed to sight a boss at
all, I've asked so often. An' you know how stale an' silly a
question seems when you've' said it a lot' of times. I've got a new
edition out now, though. I say, 'Anything doin?' or 'Any work goin'
on?' Sounds a bit fresher.

"Meantime, a man's got to provide for himself. Sometimes
the dinner he's lookin' forward to isn't on the estimates. I've
known mine to be runnin' about when I wanted it, an' I've 'ad to
pursue it diligently with a club. An' after pursuing it over much
landscape, an' fatguin' meself an' sharpenin' my appetite unduly,
it would scramble up a tree. There's few things that distress a man
more than an animated dinner indulgin' in elusive tactics when he
wants to eat it.

"But that don't 'appen often where the runs ain't no bigger
than Siberia. I've 'ad no complaints to make about the rations
comin' down from Aramac. More'n I wanted at places. I've seen some
of 'em make for the store as soon as they sighted me. At one place
the bloke was standin' over the flour bin, with a scoop in his
hand. 'Fetch yer bags 'ere,' he says, without so much as
'good-day,' or anything else. I hands him me bags, an' he takes one
an' chucks a scoop o' flour into it; takes another an' throws in a
pannikin o' sugar; takes the third, an' drops in a handful o' tea.
There was another bag—I mostly 'ave four empty ones tied up
ready. He picks it up an' looks at it; puts it down agin, an' looks
at me. 'What's this 'ere for?' says he. 'Currants,' says I. 'We
don't give currants to travellers,' says he. 'I know it's not the
rule,' says I, 'but it's a poor station as can't spare a few from
the bottom o' the box,' says I. He give me a pannikinful. They'd a
lot o' real estate about 'em; but that didn't matter. 'Meat?', says
he. 'Thanks!' says I. He fished up a big junk from the bottom of a
cask o' brine, 'Could yer spare me a bit o' tobacco?' says I, while
he was wipin' his hands. He looked at me pretty hard; but he gave
me a plug. 'I'm sorry to be so troublesome,' says I ; 'but I
'aven't a match on me,' I says; 'maybe you 'ave a few handy?' I
says. He didn't say a word; he looked hard again—an' gave me
a box. 'Could yer spare a bit o' dynamite now, if yer please,' I
says. 'Dynamite?' says he. 'What d'yer want with dynamite?' says
he. 'Well, bakin ' powder, then,' says I, 'to elevate me dampers
an' make puffterlooners,' I says. 'No.' he says, an' he leans agin
a cask o' dried apples, an' folds his arms. 'This, leprous spotted,
spifflicated grocery emporium is part an' parcel or this
double-busted squattage plant, an' can't be spared no bloomin' how
at all.' 'Thanks,' says I; 'much obliged,' says I. 'Good mornin','
says I."

Jimmy laughed a dry, jolting laugh that set all the corks
bobbing, flicked the shadow of the horse with his whip, and said,
"Get along, there!" But she didn't get along. She
switched her tail and sneezed. "The blamed flies torment
her," he said, apologetically. He flicked the shadow again,
and yelled at her to "get up." She switched her tail more
spiritedly, and stamped her foot in protest, but didn't get up
worth a cent. The man from Aramac was getting wild, and the 20
little corks were jumping with great violence. "Thing gets
stiff standin'!" he snorted. "Orlright once she's warm.
Goes like clockwork— Dang it! there's a insek in her eye. No
wonder the animal wouldn't go." He hauled his sweat rag from
his belt, folded it into a point, wet it with his tongue, and
scooped out the meddlesome insect, and jumped on it. "Nough to
send a man off his onion the things he's got to put up with in this
dingo'd country!" he rasped, as he tucked the sweat-rag under
his belt, he put his hand against her and shoved her over; then he
went to the other side and shoved her back again, as though he were
going to zig zag her to Taabinga. But he hit her with the whip and
yelled "Get up!" and she got up. Then he nodded,
"Good day," and passed down the road with the little
corks dancing cotillions around him.

I had forgotten to inquire about the drink supplying capacity of
this track, and when at noon I came to a broad, sandy creek, in
which some miniature excavations were the only indications of
water, I went down on my knees, and proceeded to burrow after it.
The sand was so loose that it was continually slipping in from the
sides, so that by the time I struck water I had a hole big enough
to bury a bullock.

I was sitting on a shaded bank near by, viewing the wide,
glittering-white channel, when two men rode up, driving some spare
horses. One was a tall young fellow, whom his mate addressed as
Paddy.

"When did you leave Nanango?" he asked.

"Last Monday."

"You're travelling nearly as fast as we are. We left on
Tuesday."

"I daresay on a long journey I'll travel faster," I
rejoined. I had never put that idea to a practical test; but I had
heard other footmen say they could beat a horse, and had beaten
that noble animal, so why shouldn't I?

"I doubt it," said Paddy, and smiled as though he
pitied my innocence.

"Well, I'll tell you what, I'll do with you," I said.
"I'll back myself against your horses on a journey to Winton
for £10." I delivered the challenge boldly enough, and
with every semblance of good faith, but felt a bit shaky as it
occurred to me that he might ask me to put up the stakes. I had one
pound.

"You'll walk all the way?" he said, considering.

"Every inch!" I replied, whilst my anxiety increased
tenfold.

He scratched his chin, his eyes roving over me the while. His
manner was more respectful, and his puzzled look, betraying a
suspicion that I might be some marvellous pedestrian walking round
the world for a wager, was flattering; still, I called myself
several kinds of fool. I glanced at the horses, and they all looked
Carbines and Darebins. I had never seen a traveller with such
well-bred, powerful-looking horses before.

"You'll carry your swag, too?" he queried, his hand
creeping down into his pocket.

"Of c-course!" I answered, and was so interested in
the subject now that I let my pipe go out. Hearing the clink of
money, I remarked that one of his horses looked as if it were going
to get away. But he didn't notice; he slewed in his saddle, and
conferred in undertones with his mate. I began to perspire like a
bush fire-sprinkler.

The conference ended he treated my humiliated person to another
scrutiny. "If the feed was good you'd loose," he said,
slowly, as though reluctant to let the chance slip. "As it
is," he continued, "it's too far out of our way, and
would knock too much out of our horses."

I felt like a dog that had got a new tail.

"Otherwise," he concluded, "I'd give you a shot
for it."

"You'd go down," I said, speaking with so much relief
that I was afraid he'd notice it. "Any strong man can beat a
horse on a long journey."

He smiled a superior smile and left my company, and, having
given myself a severe lecture on the indiscretion of making fool
wagers, I took my address into new territory.

After crossing a couple more channels, I came upon the Boyne
River, properly the upper part of the Burnett. A little farther on,
in a big bight, was Bundooma homestead. At the stables I found a
little grey whiskered man answering to the name of Archie. He was
sitting on a nailcan, waiting for sundown; but on my arrival he
concluded to knock off early. He invited me to his hut, which stood
on the opposite side of the bight, and gave me a spare bunk in his
bedroom. A very welcome haven it was for a Saturday night.

Subsequently, he brought out a pair of shears, remarking that he
had been waiting for a barber to come along until his crop had
pretty well gone to seed. He stripped to the belt, and having
seated himself comfortably on another nailcan outside the hut, I
shore his bald head and trimmed his whiskers.

Archie was one of those men whom you take to at once and feel
you have known a long time. He had been on the Cape River diggings
in its palmy days, and had seen some lively times there. Once,
while digging in a shallow hole, he was attacked by two men who
wanted his claim. One caught him by the hair and beard and lifted
him to the surface, where both fell on him with murderous intent.
But Archie had some activity about him at that time, and, eluding
his assailants, he picked up a short-handled shovel, which he used
with such effect that in a few seconds one was racing across the
field for his natural, whilst the other was crawling away with a
battered face.

"You see, on a new diggings, or on any big field for the
matter o' that," he went on, "there's all sorts an'
breeds o' men you could think of. Some's on good gold, an' some's
not gettin' a colour. An' those who get nothing brood over the
other fellow's pile till their fingers clutch in their
sleep—that is, if they've got the villainy in 'em. They begin
to poke around and watch, an' if the bloke with the money ain't
fly, he'll be cold meat in next to no time. Many a one's been done
for an' stowed away in old shafts, an 'never heard of on those
diggings again, Just a clout with a pick or a stone when he's
below—by his own mate, perhaps—an' it's all over. Half
an hour's shovellin' an' who's to know? In rush times, when nobody
knows who's who, a hundred could be murdered an' none of 'em
missed. I was followin' up a lead one day in ground that 'ad been a
bit worked before. All of a sudden I came on to a hand—a
man's hand—an' it was clutchin' a pick. I sings out to a chap
who was workin' near, an' we roots him out. He was an old digger,
who used to work with a Frenchman. No one knew where Frenchy 'ad
gone; but it was plain enough he'd done for his mate an' cleared
with the boodle."

In the good days Archie had gambled with the rest, when the
usual stake at cards was a matchboxful of gold each. He was now
groom and gardener at 15s a week. If he played cards at all, he
never staked more than a box of matches at a time—and
grumbled much if he lost. But he'd had the glorious experience that
comes to few men now, and often went back in his dreams to the
early adventures and excitement on the Cape and Palmer Rivers. Poor
old Shovelling Archie—a name he had earned by his feverish
haste to accumulate wealth—now content to sit on a nailcan,
and wait till the sun goes down.

"Would you like some fritters for supper?" he asked,
as he led the way into the skillion. I eagerly replied that I
would.

So I rolled up my sleeves and set to work. Cooking is
necessarily an accomplishment of every swagman, as it is of most
men dwelling in the bush, though a great many of them are practised
only in the preparation of the simplest fare. Their's is an art but
little known in towns, for it must be remembered that even the
settler in these inland parts has nothing like the conveniences of
the city housewife.

Still, as tasty a dinner can be cooked in hut and camp as in a
modern, well-furnished city kitchen. The man on the track, or a
family temporarily camped in the bush, can call to his aid little
more in the way of utensils and appliances than the simple
aborigine, yet if he knows the art of cookery he can still serve
you with an excellent meal.

Archie's hut had a capacious fireplace, which allowed room to
move easily all round the pots and pans. In the midst of my
fritter-making the Jondowaie-Gayndah mail came in, which called him
back to the stables. He fossicked out my bags, without saying
anything, and took them with him, together with the key of the
store. When he returned them they were full. "Be a help for
you on the road," he said then.

We yarned till late that night, he lying on one bunk, and I on
the other, a kerosene lamp, made with a pickle bottle, lighting the
apartment.

The sun was shining in at the window when he called me in the
morning.

"Bout time to get up, isn't, it?"

"Getting on that, way," I admitted.

"How would you like bacon an' eggs for breakfast?" he
asked. I replied that nothing would suit me better.

"Well," he said, "I've got no bacon, but there's
plenty of eggs, an' there's a piece of smoked beef in soak."
After a pause he enjoined; "Cut the slices thin."

I got up and cooked the breakfast. Later in the morning, he
said: "I suppose you'd like a duff for Sunday
dinner?"

"I always like a bit of cake for tea," he observed.
"There's some eggs left yet, an' here's currants an' sugar an'
drippin'. Make any sort you like."

That night I had a chat with a man who was repairing the
mustering yards. He informed me that Archie always liked to get
hold of a cook on Saturday evening. He had been known to sit for
hours on a nailcan at the stables, whence he could see the road
east and west, watching for a swagman to come along.

In what little spare time I had at Bundooma I washed the bulk of
my serviceable property, and culled out such things as were no
longer worthy of a wash; and with a much lighter swag to shoulder
next morning, I stepped briskly along towards Cadargo.

At sunset I unrolled at a mi-mi that drovers had left. When I
had carried a heap of wood, and had a bath in the waterhole, I made
the startling discovery that I possessed only one match. Being
numerous miles from everywhere, this was a serious matter to me. I
gathered a quantity of fine bars and dry leaves, put some small
twigs on top of them, and placed my hat behind the pile. Then I
essayed to strike that match. The first swipe knocked part of the
head off; but it didn't light. I got down on my knees and elbows,
and, catching it close against the head, tried again. A spark of
fire flew from it, and went out. I thought it was a hopeless case
then. My spirits dropped, and I asked of the wilderness: What is
camp without a fire? The fire was more than half my home; without
it to-night I would lack the comforting influence of my only
companion—the pipe.

There was still some head on the match, and I turned it about to
ascertain the extent of its combustibility. That didn't amount to
much. The remnant of head was mostly on one side, and needed gentle
handling. I gripped it closer, with my thumbnail on the fragment,
and struck it sharply against the box. It cracked . . . exploded .
. . it lit . . . spit . . . fizzed . . . spluttered . . .
and—bless the majestic bunyip!—it burned.

How carefully I fed the little flame! I tempted its delicate
appetite with powdered bark and blades of grass. As it grew, I fed
it with twigs and coarser bark; and when it had got fairly going, I
hauled a big log over to keep it going through the night.

I didn't sleep much. A host of possums scampered about me, and
tormented me for hours. They were the cheekiest I had ever
encountered. They laid siege to my rations, showing a partiality
for the sugar bag, which they tugged time after time from under my
pillow, the only safe place I had to keep it.

I lay quietly watching a chance, and grabbing quickly whenever a
tail came within reach. It was wonderful with what dexterity the
thing eluded me. The tail would almost touch my hand, but ere I
could grasp it the nimble bearer would spring round and look at me
half indignantly, half-triumphantly.

Playful, frolicsome creatures were these bush denizens, which
hardly yet had learned to fear man. They ate the crumbs of bread
and meat between me and the fire; they played leapfrog over me; and
they squatted on my legs and purred. Once, when I was dozing, one
jumped from a few feet up the tree, and landed heavily on my
epigastrium.

Then I put my boots on, and, armed with a long stick, I chased
them up and down, round the fire and over the blankets, first one
and then another, making desperate swipes at them as they reached
the trees; but I only hit the tree each time, and broke my
stick.

The little brutes would scamper up to a limb, then fix their
round, bright eyes on me and pur-r-rr. I sat down at last, and
threw firebrands at them till I had thrown away all my fire. Then I
gathered it up again, spread some hot coals around, and returned to
bed.

An early traveller, going the opposite way, found me still
coiled up next morning. He unloaded, and at once started to talk
possum, having been pestered himself further along the road.

"A man wants to travel at night here, an' sleep in the
daytime, when the possums are sleepin'," he declared, lighting
up with a coal. "If there was one doin' the light fantastic
round me last night there was a hundred. Never got a wink till the
mornin' star showed up."

"I hope they didn't clean you out of matches," I
remarked. "Struck my final last night."

"Similar," he returned, tapping his chest with a grimy
forefinger. "Thinkin' o' keepin' this fire goin' till someone
comes with a few."

I left him at it, and hurried along a pad, winding through a
myall forest, that scarcely boasted enough traffic to keep it
visible.

About noon I fetched up at Cadargo, a sub-squattage nestling
under a red, scrubby ridge. An old blackfellow (a poor relation or
hanger-on) was dining alone at the kitchen table, while a black
girl stood attentive in the corner. I called twice to the
antiquity, but he did not turn his head. He was tussling with a
shank bone, which he held in both hands. His knife and fork were on
the floor.

I turned to the girl. She touched her ear, nodding towards the
veteran.

"Deaf."

"Could you oblige me with a few matches?" I asked.

"Got none."

"None in the house?"

"No; father took th' last this mornin'."

"Where's father?''

"On the run."

"Be long?"

She looked at me a moment, then answered: "He won't bring
it back; want it to light his pipe."

"Can I see the missus?" I asked.

She crossed from the kitchen and went into the house, and
presently out came a fat, cleanly-dressed lubra, with a broom in
her hand.

I repeated the request for matches.

"We haven't a match left on the station," she said.
"The boss took the last with him this mornin'."

Then I understood that the boss and the black girl's father were
one.

"That's a blue look-out," I said.

She came to the rescue. "Firestick?" she
suggested.

"Thanks!"

She brought a smoking stick from the fire, and with this I
departed, swinging it gently to and fro to keep it alight.

Night found me a mile off the road, by a running stream,
surrounded by colossal gums, and with the usual multitude of
possums in attendance. Once more I lay in wait, grabbing at the
tails whenever a chance offered. At last I caught one, and
thereafter I had no immediate company but the dead.

The carcase I roasted, and served cold for breakfast. It was
done to a turn, and appreciating the change from salt junk, I ate
half of it. The remains I stowed in the bag for dinner, conscious
meanwhile of an embarrassing situation if a cosherman happened
along and overhauled things.

I reached Condarah—another sub-squattage—at sundown,
having walked 31 miles since breakfast. After a hot meal, which was
brought to me by a beautiful girl, I felt that I could have done
another ten miles without being knocked up. I began to feel an
interest by this time in the distance I was putting behind me, and
there were days together when I gave little thought to anything
else but stepping over the miles, and feasting my eyes on the
scenic beauties that were ever opening out before me. There came
intermissions when I thought of a home of my own, and then these
continuous day-long tramps seemed wasted time. The people at
Coudarah were all whites—a married couple in the house, and
two stockmen quartered in a shed near by. We played cards in the
shed till bedtime, all sitting on the floor. One of the players was
a teamster known as Barefooted Harry, who was bound for Auburn, the
head squattage. He had never worn a pair of boots in his life, and
his feet were so hard that he could strike matches on his heel. His
mates were wont to make disrespectful remarks about the size of
them, and allege that he couldn't find boots big enough to get them
into. However, there was no doubt about their toughness. One
evening he strolled up to another teamster's camp, and stood by the
fire. Presently, one of the men said, sniffing: "What's
burning? Smells like hide." "Why," answered another,
"it's Harry's foot. He's standing on the oven lid that's just
come off the fire. Better shift it, Harry. Might get cooked."
Harry removed the invulnerable member, and felt the burning lid
with his fingers. " 'Ot, all right," he agreed. The first
speaker stared in awestruck wonder at Harry's naked ends.
"Pretty good wearin' soles them!" he commented.

September 5.—The so-called road to Bungaban was as hard to
follow as a homing bee, and soon after leaving Condarah I took a
wrong turning down a broad lagoon. When I had gone a mile I put my
swag down, and went back to look up the embyro track. Noting the
trend of it, I returned and cut round the lagoon, striking the road
after an hour's walking. To my chagrin I now discovered that had I
kept on at first I would have hit it in about 15 minutes. Only a
trifle this; but a trifle that torments a man for the rest of the
day.

Towards sundown I sighted the Half-way Hut, standing on top of a
steep hill, with a dense brigalow scrub close behind it. Seeing a
buggy and cart, and a number of chance-bred poultry about, I
reckoned I was in luck's way again, for these things suggested a
white couple.

A pack of dogs rushed at me, barking and yelping, as I
approached. Three black gins ran out and threw sticks, and the
scrubbing brush at them; and a big fat gin, with a yearling infant
toddling after her, chased them with a broom. She made a vicious
swipe at the nearest mongrel, missed, and struck the toddler across
the middle. With much concern she grabbed it up, and mingled
condolences in two languages with its lusty squalls, while dancing
a fandango round the discarded sweeper.

I accosted the eldest girl, a fine-made damsel, whose face was
as black and glossy as coal tar. "Is the boss at
home?"

"He's away ridin'," she answered. "Be home
sundown."

"Is the missus at home?" She looked towards the big
gin. That lady stepped forward.

"I'm the missus. You want ter see me?"

"Oh, not particularly!" I gasped, taken aback. "I
wished to know if I could camp here?"

"No!"— seriously. "I don't think my 'usband
would like it. You camp in the scrub. Plenty firewood there keep
you warm."

"I would rather be nearer the water," I said.
"Any harm to camp at the water hole?"

"Oh, no! My 'usband not objek you camp there."

I was turning away when a young black follow emerged from the
brigalow, carrying a dead wallaby in his hand. I inquired if he was
the boss.

"Oh, no!" she said. "Him only rouseabout. He work
for my 'usband. We pay him the wages, an' he ketch his own
tucker."

'What is your husband?"

"Him manager," she answered proudly. Her fat arm swung
round the compass. "He manage all about this station. Plenty
cow—plenty bull—plenty horse—he manage all them
pfeller."

"I see! He doesn't want another rouseabout, I
suppose?"

"Oh, tear, no; one plenty. Very slack time now."

About dusk the manager rode up. I had expected to see a white
man, for mixed marriages were not uncommon in this part; but he was
a full-blooded aborigine—a big, robust man, with a flowing,
well-combed beard.

"Goo' day."

"Goo' day."

"Trav'lin'?"

"Trav'lin'."

"Which way you come?"

"Bundooma."

"When you pull away?"

"To-morrow morning."

"T' Auburn?"

"Bungaban."

He nodded towards my little blaze.

"Mind the grass," he enjoined, and went on.

Other blacks came in on foot from various points, and squatted
down in front of the hut. Little fires glowed among them, and soon
there rose a corroboree chant, to the beating of clubs and the
screeching of a concertina, while a hundred dingoes took up the
chorus in the surrounding bush.

Here was the home of primitive man and the primordial beast; and
I, the product of centuries of civilisation, squatting before my
camp-fire, with ears trained to the cries of the living meat in the
wild, was very close to both.

At Bungaban, which I reached early next day, I was instructed to
put up at the travellers' hut on the creek. Here was a sheet of
bark on two cross-pieces of wood doing duty for a bunk, and a
bundle of straw for mattress. The door was also a sheet of bark,
and there was a bumpy table of the same material. The furniture had
doubtless been supplied by a comfort-loving wanderer, for usually a
profound emptiness characterises

The Travellers' Hut.

Unwatched and unkempt in the bend of the
creek,
It stands, like a dead house, alone;
Unpainted, unfurnished, and gaping and bleak,
With a fire-place rough circled with stone.
Though none call it home, it is evidence plain
Of the goodness of Squatter McNutt,
Who, pained at the thought of tramps camped in the rain,
Erected the "Travellers ' Hut."

They come from all parts of the civilised
globe,
All sorts and conditions of men,
And each, with the stoical patience of Job,
Makes room in the limited den;
And they wash and they cook and stop gaps in their togs,
And blow of the tallies they've cut,
Of horses they've ridden, of wonderful dogs
That have camped in the Travellers' Hut.

According to treatment they scribble their
views
Of Squatter McNutt on the slabs;
And they read on the wall a queer budget of news
Pertaining to bosses and scabs;
While raddled and charcoaled, and cut out with knives,
On the ricketty door that wont shut,
Are legends denoting the want of good hives
By men in the Travellers' Hut.

* It has sheltered the artist who favours the
nude
His creations unsettle the mind;
And the budding bush bard, whose effusions, though crude,
Are of a delectable kind;
Unhampered by aught in morality's code,
He follows no commonplace rut,
And produces a hair-raising, soul-stirring ode,
That staggers the Travellers' Hut.

'Tis a club where the wandering geniuses meet,
With the cream of bush liars in tow,
And they hold a smoke concert, or musical treat,
While the mopokes are calling below;
And they register all their cognomens ornate,
Which a sample is "Billy-the-Nut,"
With poetic allusions to loves out of date,
On the walls of the Travellers' Hut.

Their language is forceful, their manners
superb,
Their modesty's really sublime;
There's little their feelings will hurt or disturb,
But to 'mister' a man is a crime.
They sleep on the floor, and they fidget and snore,
These talented students of Smut,**
And at morn with Matilda they're padding once more
From the door of the Travellers' Hut.

*This verse was missing from The Catholic
Press, but was printed in The Queenslander

**In the Catholic Press, the words "of
Smut" were replaced by "a-glut."

CHAPTER X.
A Long "Short Cut"—The Bard of Juandah.

September 7.— I had been told about a bridle-track and a
dray road to Juandah. The former was shorter. Therefore, when I saw
a track running straight into a dark scrub, and the road going
round it, I took the track. It turned out to be a cattle-pad, and
run to a mudhole in a deep gully. From there I made a bee-line
through the scrub to cut the road. The thorns and twigs caught my
swag, knocked my hat off, hooked on to my clothes, and either
jerked me back or jerked the piece out. It was soon impressed upon
me that my straw hat was not the proper thing to wear in a tangled
scrub. Everything ground and rasped and gritted on it; its serrated
edges sawed into vine and branch, and the band began to run out
like chain stitches. The worst happened when the billycan was
knocked out of my hand, and every drop of the precious cold tea I
had been taking particular care of was spilt. I was thirsty, too,
and had been saving it until I got thirstier. I got thirstier.

At last I struck the road—in thick brigalow. Too thirsty
to spell, I plodded along in a lather of sweat and dust. Crossed a
flat and rounded two hills. No refreshments. Midday passed, and the
dryness continued. I hung on to the road, though at times I was
uncertain as to whether I was on it or not. One never feels
comfortable on a thoroughfare of that sort, which requires the
skill of a tracker to trace; under the present circumstances it was
an aggravation.

Two hours after noon I reached a wet creek, and plunged straight
into it. Never had I appreciated cold water so much as I did
then.

The road was now visible to the naked eye, and remained so to
Juandah. This place has some historic interest, for it was here, on
the bank of Juandah Lagoon, that "Fraser's vengeance" was
worked after the Hornet Bank massacre in 1857. The squattage was
also noted for its horsemen, many of whom were reputed to be among
the most daring riders that ever sat in a saddle. Situated in a
beautiful spot, on a low hill overlooking a broad, reedy lagoon,
Juandah at first sight looked like a village; there were so many
workshops and huts, several of them standing in a row, facing the
road. A married couple occupied the first hut, and I was permitted
to occupy the next, which was in ruins.

The benedict was rather a good sort. After tea I smoked a pipe
with him in his skillion. Two squattage hands were also there. One,
whom they called Joe, was known in bush vernacular as a hard case;
the other was a bush poet—a man who had an air of grave
superiority, and wore ample locks and a ragged-pointed black beard.
He stood with his back to the fire, and was unfolding a crumpled
sheet of foolscap as I entered. He scanned me with disapproval in
his ferret eyes, but Benedict set my doubts at rest.

"Sit down, mate," he said. Then he introduced me to
the company. "A traveller from Thompson's Hut." The man
with the paper coughed. "Go on, Harvey," Benedict
continued, "let's hear this pome."

Harvey cleared his throat, stuck one thumb in the armhole of his
vest, and holding the paper out with the other, announced, with
evident pride: "Ode to a Slush lamp!" Joe nearly choked.
Benedict smiled, and his teeth gripped his pipe hard. The poet
paused, and glanced round suspiciously; but Joe was rooting
desperately after a coal. He coughed again, and proceeded:

Ode To A Slush Lamp.

It fizzes and hisses and splutters,
It spits like a she-cat, and glares;
It staggers and wobbles and flutters,
And squirts boiling grease unawares;
Though bushmen may vote it a shiner,
It possesses a stench, as a rule,
That could beat the old stinkpots of China,
And paralyse Brannigan's mule.

When you light the dudeen at its flicker,
You'd think your tobacco was fat,
For its breath's penetrating, and thicker
Than the fumes from a soap-maker's vat.
When the table at supper it favours,
Though varied the dishes you call,
Its aroma still smothers and flavours
Till Slushy is tasted in all.

Its continual flutter would blind you,
As it boils on an upended case
By your bunk—just beside or behind you,
Casting flashes and shades on your face;
There are spots on the page you are reading,
Words tremble and shudder and dance,
Lines are twining and darting, receding,
And buckling from under your glance.

Ants, beetles and moths are cremated
In its seething and simmering grease,
And as the vile mixture's collated,
Its eruptions and bubblings increase.
You may blow out or douse the old glimmer,
But you cannot extinguish the stink;
It continues to smoke and to simmer
As you into oblivion sink.

"Not too bad at all," said Benedict, as the poet
concluded. "I take an interest in Australian literature.
Always did."

"The stink part's true to nature, any way," commented
Joe. "What do you think of it, mate?" He glanced at me,
then bobbed down quickly to lace his boot.

"It has one good point," I ventured; "it's
original."

"It has to be polished yet," the poet told us. "I
dashed it off in a few minutes the other day on the cattle
camp."

Joe dashed after another coal.

"Beats me how you think it all out," mused Benedict.
"Keepin' the sense, an' makin' it run even, so to speak, an'
come in rhyme, an' all that. Darn if I could do it if I was to be
shot."

"You aint a je-ne-ass," said Joe. The poet ran his
fingers through his long hair—which gave Joe another idea.
"You're nearly as bald as a claypan, too," he added.

"They say poets are born, not made," spoke Benedict.
"Something like a freak o' nature, I suppose. . . . Have you
any more like that, Harvey?"

Harvey, having carefully folded his manuscript, put it back in
his pocket. "I commenced a lyric this morning," he said,
reflectively. "It goes—

"I cannot, unfortunately," the poet replied. "I'm
hampered by the deficiencies and inadequacy of the English
language, and, in consequence, have not been able to complete the
poem."

"What's missin'?" asked Joe.

"There's no rhyme for beetles," the poet informed
him.

Joe scratched his head meditatively— and brought out an
idea.

"Put it in German-English." he suggested. "Say
'peedles'—that will rhyme with needles—

Och, der liddle poomin' peedles,
Vot hafe mantiples like needles—

Why, strike me fat, that's real sublime."

The poet sniffed. "I wouldn't disgrace my pen by writing
such rubbish," he declared. Then, turning on the abashed
Joseph, "Did Milton murder his mother tongue in that way? Did
Tennyson stoop to such hollow subterfuges? Did
Shakespeare—?" Mr. Harvey made a gesture as if
dismissing the subject in despair. "I'll say
good-night."

"Put in some more boomin', and get over the beetle
bog," Joe called after him. "Like this—

Oh, the boomin', boomin', boomin',
Of the beetles in the night —

That's po-hetical, anyway!"

But the bard of Juandah had gone.

I saw him again on the following day, which was Sunday. He
called on me at Thompson's Hut, in the afternoon. Why he sought me
out I do not know, except that he was not in sympathy with the
other men on Juandah, and they were not in sympathy with him.

In these degenerate, prosaic days, the poor poet sits alone,
musing over the golden days that were, and seeing no encouraging
prospect in the future. He feels almost like an outcast, a relic of
a bygone age, who has outlived his usefulness. The people around
him are so deadly practical they have no time for dreamers. When he
would carry them with him into the ethereal, they smile cynically
and call him eccentric; when he would guide their steps along the
amber ways, bid their souls go soaring with him among the stars,
and breathe ambrosial air, they rudely tell him to go and get work;
when he writes love stanzas to his best girl, spending hours in
immortalising her endearing charms, she crumples the precious
manuscript in her bejewelled hand, and wants to know what salary he
gets. Still hopeful, he collects his poetical masterpieces and
publishes them in book form—and the book falls flat. It
doesn't earn him bread and butter. But he does not despair; in his
loneliness and poverty he murmurs, "When I am dead I'll be
famous."

We live, indeed, in practical times, in a commercial age that
takes no stock of the sublime. The poet is regarded with a
good-natured smile; his lofty profession has even been brought to
the verge of ridicule. He is caricatured the world over as a wild
looking person with long hair, and with spring poems growing out of
his pocket. Except in literary circles, he is almost ashamed to
admit that he writes poetry. He has given up calling his effusions
"poems"; he calls them "verses" and
"jingles." That is modern modesty; but it shows that
Pegasus has dropped from his airy heights, and plods shamefacedly
through the rude ways of the material world. Only here and there
does he find a sympathetic heart; he meets with more scorn than
appreciation—until he reaches the last post. "When I am
dead I'll be famous." He has to die to make good. Then the
sentimental, and the people of literary tastes will buy his
books—and partly read them. Posthumous fame is his only
reward.

Alas, poor poet! He sees the glory of the southern dawn; he
feels the inspiration of the autumn sunset; but he realises that
the public does not want that luminary to soar up and down on
metric feet. So he sits apart, and dreams his dreams alone.

There was no seat in Thompson's Hut for a visitor to sit down
on; so Mr. Harvey stood with his back to the big fireplace, his
hands behind him, his heels tapping intermittently on the
floor.

After awhile he drew some closely written sheets of note paper
from his inside pocket, and deftly straightened out the folds and
creases by using his thumb and forefinger for a mangle.

"This will interest you," he said. "It relates to
three young fellows I used to know."

Then he read:

Tanglefoot, Larry, and I.

When the corn crop failed on the river farm,
Where we'd grafted for unknown years,
Through drought and flood, and through storm and calm,
Growing the golden ears—
We talked it over with dad and Jack,
Kissed mother and Sis "good-bye,"
Then shouldered the pack for the sheds out back,
Did Tanglefoot, Larry and I.

We tramped in file from the stack of hay,
And faced for a distant town;
While mother watched from the door that day
Till after the sun went down.
Oft now I laugh at the dreams we had
As we gazed at the starlit sky,
When, all so glad on the outward pad,
Were Tanglefoot, Larry and I.

Where the heat-haze gleams on the Paroo plains,
And dances o'er rift and rut,
O'er the blazing slopes where it never rains,
By many an empty hut;
Where the quiet of death ever reigns supreme,
Except when the flies make free,
This tramp doth seem like a hell-wrought dream
To Tanglefoot, Larry and me.

For the bush we're booked, and the nor'-west
track
Is lit by our nightly fires;
The swap's a lease of each bending back,
God knows when the lease expires!
To chuck the lot of the outcast band,
We follow the sheds and try,
But never a stand, or a job on hand,
Find Tanglefoot, Larry and I.

For a year we went—and it's three years
now,
And we promised them all we'd write;
But we can't agree to a "post" somehow,
And your permanent job's a skite.
Our address just now is at Emu Peak,
And close by the track lie we;
But 'twill go next week down the Toompine Creek,
With Tanglefoot, Larry and me.

They'd like us home, but as hard-up men
Our chances of home are small;
If we can't go back with a pile— well, then,
We'll never go back at all!
We'll write next job, and we'll tell old dad
We're putting the money by,
For each roving lad's on a droving prad,
Say Tanglefoot, Larry and I.

There was a stab in almost every line of that screed for
me—whose address just then was Thompson's Hat, and would go
next week to the Dawson River. I said the harrowing thing was very
good, and inquired if he had done anything more with the beetles.
Before speaking he refolded the sheets of paper and returned them
to his pocket. Then he said:

"A literary man hasn't much chance to do himself justice
when he has to earn his living by manual labour. On a squattage
he's going from sunrise to sunset. That doesn't allow him much time
for writing. He hasn't much energy left either. . . . Ah, well!
such is life."

With that he left me, and I saw him no more.

CHAPTER XI.
On the Dawson River.—Leichhardt's Track.—Wool-O.

Joe had recommended Taroom way as worth prospecting for stray
billets; but he did not mention that the road was as dry as Mount
Browne.

A small place, which was planted well back from the main
thoroughfare, he had particularised as one to be firmly excluded
from the prospecting itinerary. The unwitting swagman who entered
there did so to his disadvantage. The head of the run, who was
known on the Dawson as "Daddy Pintpot," was strongly
prejudiced against the unattached wanderer. One of the fraternity
stuck him up for rations once in his more generous days, and gave
him a surprise. Daddy was dipping the flour out of a bin with a
pannikin, a few spoonfuls at a time, when the swaggy interrupted:
''Ere, you dunno how to dip up flour. Lemme show yer."
Grabbing the pannikin, he dipped 20 lbs. into his bag in half a
minute. "There,'' he said, "that's the way to dip up
flour!" And, slinging the bag across his shoulder, he was gone
before Daddy had got his breath back.

I had intended to camp just beyond the homestead; but could find
no water. Went on and on till the day wore away, and nary a
prospect of a wet. Night fell, and still water was an absent
quantity. I thought of the man who said, "Let there be
carrots," and there were carrots; and I said to the
approaching darkness, "Let there be water!" Alas! I
couldn't perform miracles worth a cent. I stumbled through two
hours of night, finally camping by a dry reed-bed, athirst and
weary.

September 10: The early bird catches the worm; so I got up early
and exploited half an acre of grass on my hands and knees, licking
the dew off the blades. Cut my tongue, got stung on the lip by a
beastly insect, and sowed a grass-seed in my eye.

I tramped on till nearly noon, when I intersected a wet gully
near Callabah. Here I had breakfast and a bath.

From Callabah into town the country was well supplied with
lagoons—mostly fringed with bogged beasts. It was only at an
occasional spot, inaccessible to stock, that I could obtain water
that was fit to drink. Deep holes were plentiful; but the water was
polluted with decaying carcases. Around one small lagoon, within a
couple of miles of Taroom, I counted 196 beasts dead and dying.
Both sides of the long lagoons were lined with bogged cattle for
miles. They were in fair condition, but nobody bothered to pull
them out. They were not valuable enough to be worth the trouble of
saving until rain came to fill the holes and freshen the pastures.
The waste was prodigious. Only where succour was within easy reach,
and cost nothing, did owners shift their starving stock from a
barren run. Similar waste and carelessness were to be seen on
scores of runs that dry year, though nowhere to such a terrible
extent as in the Dawson River district.

I reached Taroom just before sunset, and camped in a little
gunyah on the bank of the river. This gunyah was about the size of
a Myall's mi-mi, its material being a quantity of bushes leaned
against a pole, which, in turn, leaned against a tree. It had
previously been occupied for two weeks by a married couple.

I put on my other trousers after tea, and did the block in town.
The centre of interest in the little place was Leichhardt's Tree,
standing in the main street, on which was carved the letter
"L." On looking up the baker I discovered that his name
was Chong Fat Sue, and that his wife was a black gin, who assisted
in the store and bakery. Ornamented with jewellery, and in a
lownecked dress, she suggested to my mind a portly black duchess.
She parcelled up some sugar for me very neatly, and snapped the
string on her finger.

"Anything else, please?"

"I was hunting for the sixpence I thought I had."

"Any tea?"

"I have some, thank you."

"Where did you get it?" The jealousy of business
rivalry was insistent.

"At Bundooma."

"Oh, post-and-rail stuff"—disdainfully, "I
wouldn't drink it." She reached down a packet from the shelf,
whilst I stood with my hands buried in two empty pockets, trying to
recollect where my money was. "This is a very good
blend."

Here Fat Sue joined in. "Best tea in Taloom, Two shillings
one pong. How much you want?"

I rounded up the bread and sugar. "I'll pay you
to-morrow," I said. "I've left my money at
home."

And, sure enough, before 8 o'clock next morning, a blackboy
arrived at my camp with the goods.

I was so well satisfied with Taroom that I camped there for two
weeks, during which time I spent my last sixpence. I had the good
luck to drop in with a young fellow who was shepherding for a
butcher, and who passed my gunyah daily with his flock. He brought
a gun with him every day, and I shot ducks for him and for myself.
Of course, he took his home and said he shot them.

I was camped on Leichhardt's track. Along this tranquil stream
he and his party had passed on their way to Port Essington fifty
years ago. Half a mile lower down, on a low hill on which Taroom
stands, they had camped, looking out upon a beautiful open forest
standing then in all its primeval glory. Rich and splendid was the
Dawson region, inhabited by aboriginal tribes of fine stature and
physique. Powerful and admirable native clans, they were at the
same time the most blood-thirsty savages in Queensland. To the
whites who followed later, and pioneered the Dawson, Comet, Nagoa,
Mackenzie, Suttor, Burdekin, and other rivers, it was always a
matter of wonder how Ludwig Leichhardt was allowed to pass through
without being molested. It was not till he reached the Gulf country
that he was attacked, in June 1845, when Gilbert, the naturalist,
was killed, and two other members of the party were wounded.

The luck that attended the explorer on that trip deserted him on
his last expedition in 1848, when he and his companions vanished
for ever from the ken of men. Always it has remained a mystery how
and when and where he met his death. A thousand and one theories
have been published, and tracks and marks have been discovered,
even far into the Northern Territory, believed to be Leichhardt's,
but nothing definite has ever been brought to light. Though he
disappeared so long ago—last heard of at Cogoon, on Fitzroy
Downs—public interest in his fate has never died, and bushmen
on "Leichhardt's Track" still look for traces. Old
bushmen who have been among the blacks from childhood, and who
speak the aboriginal language with fluency, have heard yarns of
Leichhardt's fate from different blackfellows who could have seen
Leichhardt, and the yarns varied. But there was no mention of a
massacre; the general impression given was that Leichhardt perished
with his party for want of water.

September 23. Left Taroom, going west. Met a girl and a boy
driving a flock of turkeys to town. The ways of the feathered flock
were not the ways of sheep or cattle. When they saw anything
uncommon they stopped, dropped their wings, strutted about and
gobbled. It took some shooing and a quantity of sticks and clods to
start them on again. Then a grasshopper flew up, and away went the
lot of them after it. The girl and the boy followed, pelting at
them and shooing till they were breathless. Rounded up again, the
flock went slowly on till several more grasshoppers flew up in
several directions. There was an excited flutter of wings and a
general split up. The girl ran one way leaping and waving her arms,
and the boy dashed off in the opposite direction with his hat in
his hand. There seemed to be a lot of excitement in turkey
droving.

Fetched Kinnoul at midday. Shearing was in progress here, and
the shearers and rouseabouts were just going to dinner in two
little humpies. Going to the first, I inquired the way to Tambo.
The men laughed, and somebody said it was 300 miles. Then one
pointed to a track, and said that was the road to start on. I was
starting when they called me back.

"Have you had your dinner?" asked one.

"I haven't," I replied.

"Well, come and have it. You're not in such a hurry to get
to Tambo that you can't stop for meals, are you?"

Then a stout-built man named Stahmer came out from the
table.

"There's a job waitin' here for someone," he informed
me. "Want a job?"

I said I did.

"Chuck the pack then."

"What's the hook?"

"Wool-rollin'—21s 6d a week and rations. We're all
batchin', and the three tanners are for cookin'. Ever do any
wool-rollin'?"

"Not a roll."

"Ever seen it done?"

"Never been in a shed."

"Well, there's nothing to learn. I'll put you in the way of
it before the boss comes down. He's generally a bit late after
dinner."

I felt glad, though my chances of getting the billet depended on
the boss being late. He was late. The picker-up, a doctor's son,
rang the cow-bell, and the eight shearers
started—leisurely.

They were a queer team. Two were selectors from Roma, and two
were men of all work from Taroom. Of the other four, Stahmer was a
colt-breaker; "Old Charlie" had been a schoolmaster, and
had taken his degree at Oxford; the third was a miner, and the
other had been a squatter. Anderson, the boss, a jovial old fellow
of 60, and as white of hair and beard as a flour bag, came in and
eyed me at the table. I was rolling up fleeces with a fine display
of style. He drew nearer, his eye more critical. I developed more
style.

"Are you working here?" he inquired softly.

"I'm the wool-roller," I said.

"Oh! All right; all right." And with that the old
gentleman ambled down the board. Kinnoul was little better than a
cocky's shed when compared with the big sheds of farther out, and
it knew nothing of the rules and regulations of those places.
Anderson superintended operations. He wasn't too fond of pacing the
board; any one with a good yarn to tell could hold him through a
full run.

The shearers were unionists from the start till the shed cut
out. The principle of the union consisted of each man getting the
boss by the ear in turns, whilst the others tomahawked the sheep
and ran up big tallies. They also got the rosellas (sheep that had
shed their coats), which Anderson pulled out of the pens when there
were no yarns to hear.

Deaf Harry was an exceptionally rough shearer, and Anderson, in
his leisure moments, had a habit of standing beside him with his
back against the pen-rails. At such times Harry was
"wired" pretty often, and as the words had to be shouted,
the whole shed knew how he was getting on.

The union saved Harry from being "speared" the first
week. When the situation was getting a bit too sultry for him, the
man at the other end of the board would start on something
peculiarly adapted to the tastes of the old gentleman. He would
cock his ear, and move a step or two nearer. As the yarn got
interesting, he would gradually draw down till he reached "the
man with the flute;" and then till bell-o his fixity of tenure
could be relied on, for he could tell a good yarn himself, and one
yarn generally led to another. Sometimes a dead silence would be
broken by a loud laugh. Mr. Anderson would approach briskly.
"What's that? What's that?" he'd ask eagerly. Then one
would start a yarn of which his co-laughers had no
preconception.

A levy of 6d a week was made on members, the fund being
augmented by sundry fines for neglect of duty to one another. Such
cases were in regard to a "double chip," considered to
have resulted from the culprit's non-deliverance of something
interesting at the required moment. The cases were adjudged at
night by a specially-constituted court. The fund was expended on
luxuries for Sunday, when one big plum duff was made, and everybody
dined together.

We had been at work a fortnight when a thunderstorm put an end
to shearing, so far as it concerned myself and four others. Only
four men were retained to finish the shed—the four who told
the best yarns.

After being paid off, we spent the afternoon fishing in a big
lagoon near the homestead. Everyone was eager to catch a
barramundi, a lung fish found only in Dawson waters and the Burnett
River. It proved an elusive genius; but we extracted a fry of bony
bream—a sweet fish which has more bones to the square inch
than a cemetery. Toward sundown Stahmer missed a couple of bites,
and was prepared to swear the biter was barramundi. He knew by the
wriggle of it.

By-and-bye he got a third bite, and this time he hooked the
animal. The spasm of violent activity with which he accomplished it
lost him his hat, which blew into the lagoon. Nobody heeded it. The
line swung towards the bank. There was a moment of breathless
suspense. Then up came a snake like head, eight inches of
much-stretched neck, a great circular shell, four kicking legs, and
a little stumpy tail wriggling behind.

A roar of laughter greeted Stahmer as he disgustedly landed the
turtle.

"Where's my hat?" was all he said, as he flung the
shellback away into the grass.

"It's just sunk," said old Charlie.

Stahmer looked black. "One of you might a-fished it out for
me," he growled. "Warn't much trouble."

"I knew that hat would sink," Deaf Harry put in as
Stahmer turned away. "Could tell by the wriggle of
it."

"Never mind, Stahmer," said Charlie, soothingly.
"You didn't do as bad as McShaver and his two gentlemen pals,
anyway."

"Who's McShaver?" sulkily from Stahmer.

"Squatter down country a bit. Cracks himself up to be a
fine bushman and an expert angler. One night he and his two friends
carted a net overland to the Burnett, and stretched it across a
narrow neck. They had no boat, so they took it in turns to swim to
and fro when they wanted to lift it, and likewise drop it again.
They put in the night without getting so much as a scale. In the
morning they found they were fishing a short, blind gully, in which
a thunderstorm had left about four feet of water. The river was a
stone's throw farther on.

CHAPTER XII.
Eurombah.—George Boyce.—A Deal in Brumbies.

On Monday morning Stahmer, Deaf Harry and I left for Eurombah, a
squattage 12 miles distant, that was famed for its brumbies,
barramundi and bunyip. The brumbies ran in big mobs in the brigalow
scrubs; the barramundi grew to huge proportions in Eurombah Lagoon,
which, according to the blacks, who had long shunned it, was also
the home of the bunyip.

A thunderstorm the day before had left pools and sheets of water
gleaming all over the flats. There was still a drizzling rain when
we started, and as none of us had overcoats we substituted
flour-sacks by cutting a hole in the bottom, and slitting the sides
for arm-holes, and slipping them over our heads. Reaching below our
knees, with our trousers tucked up, they kept us fairly dry. The
idea was Harry's. He had a fondness for bags. The greater part of
his pack consisted of Wagga rugs and Murrum bidgee blankets.

Harry led the way. He also led a short tailed chestnut horse, an
attenuated and melancholy animal which carried our swags. He
slipped down in the mud with them three times, and required our
conjoint assistance to stagger up again. We walked one behind the
other, through slush and water, scattered branches and driftwood.
Each carried a billycan in one hand, and a pair of boots slung over
the shoulder on the end of a stick. We were like three wandering
advertisements, each bearing the name of a brand of flour, the
trade mark, the miller's name, and the name of his factory, in big,
red letters on the back.

In this fashion we trudged and slipped along to Eurombah, and
had just got nicely ensconced in the harness room when another
thunderstorm came on.

The homestead was perched on the end of a hill near the river,
and overlooking a big lagoon. In the early years of its settlement
this place was the scene of many bloody conflicts with the blacks.
Nineteen shepherds and others were speared on the run, but of the
number of aborigines shot in retalliation there was no record. We
had heard a good deal about Eurombah brumbies, and intimated to Mr.
Lord that we wished to buy some. I had two pounds sterling in my
pocket. Mr. Lord promised to have several hundred horses in for our
inspection on Wednesday. He offered to keep us in meat, and to lend
us fishing lines—to save the meat; so my two mates promptly
decided to wait. I would have gone on, as buying a horse meant
buying riding gear; and when you take the price of a horse out of
two pounds, you haven't much left to expend on the necessary
accoutrements. But that evening I met a wandering ex-jockey, named
George Boyce, who was going my way, and knew the road. The other
two were bound for Roma. George, whose small, wrinkled face was
ornamented with a sandy moustache, was a cheerful sort, who could
joke and sing in the face of his own adversity. He was so
near-sighted that he nearly had no sight at all. Deaf Harry, who
had met him before, endeavoured to persuade him to go to Roma.

"You're blind, an' I'm deaf," he argued, "an'
we'll only be a twin nuisance to the other fellows. I can't hear
the horse-bells, an' you can't see the horses. They'll 'ave to
horse-hunt for us. But if we go together, you'll be able to hear
the bells' and show me the direction, an' I'll be able to see the
horses."

This brilliant idea didn't come off. George had three horses,
and had agreed if I bought a brumby to quieten and ride it for me
whilst I rode one of his. When we reached the Maranoa he would give
me another for it. This generous offer was induced by the fact that
George had neither money nor tobacco, and badly wanted a financial
mate. I agreed to his proposal, while desperately calculating, how
much I could apportion to the various items I had to purchase out
of my two pounds.

Tuesday was mainly spent on the banks of the lagoon, fishing for
barramundi, the excitement of which saved me a lot of suspense.

Everybody was astir early on Wednesday, Harry and Stahmer
talking horse and cracking jokes about riding. They were also
displaying a lively interest in all such things as saddle-straps,
buckles and stirrup-irons. Lots of these articles were going to
ruin in out-of-the-way corners, and it was marvellous how quickly
an energetic man could amalgamate them into something of
utility.

A great muster of brumbies were run in from the paddock during
the morning, and after lunch Mr. Lord took us up to the stockyards.
He was a big, hearty man, clean shaven, with a ruddy and happy cast
of countenance.

We clustered at a little drafting yard, through which the horses
were passed. There seemed to me to be enough of them to supply the
Indian market—the majority of them well-set and attractive
animals. They were worked through the yards by two stockmen and two
brumby-shooters—for thousands of the horses were trapped and
shot every summer for their hides.

The first eight were snorters, and the buyers stood off. Then a
wild, black colt took Stahmer's fancy. He was a handsome beast,
with great neck and quarters, and an ebony coat that shone like
silk.

"What's the figure?"

"Thirty bob. Dirt cheap to anyone who can ride."

As Stahmer had been blowing about his riding, this sounded like
a challenge. George, who wanted to see some fun, offered to give a
hand with the breaking-in as an extra inducement. Stahmer hunted
the colt round the yard several times, and could find no fault with
him. He was certainly cheap; I would have bought him myself if he
had been cheaper.

"I'll take him," said Stahmer.

Three more went through; then a big, bay colt was blocked. Deaf
Harry got down off the rails to look at him. He was a handy sort of
horse, suitable for saddle, pack or harness. The owner highly
recommended him, and on this recommendation Harry became the
purchaser. I was the only buyer left. A splendid-looking chestnut
was the first blocked for my inspection. Five pounds! I searched it
desperately for a fault, and concluded that it was too fiery about
the heels. Another chestnut followed. Three pounds. This one was
easier for a buyer of limited means to judge; it was too clumsy.
Two beautiful bays were the next, at 50s each. Too wild. They sent
in the fifth, and the sixth—they sent in 75, and the 75 were
rejected as being defective in 75 different ways. Mr. Lord was
beginning to talk to himself, and to wonder what he had fetched the
horses in for. The drafters were using uncomplimentary language;
and this unfortunate buyer began to wish himself several miles and
a furlong up a dry gully.

Only a few remained of the first yard for me to inspect. I
continued to inspect. Presently along came a weedy brown
galloway—slab-sided and lop-eared like a donkey. Its mane was
long and matted, its tail trailed on the ground. It had one good
point—it looked quiet.

"There you are—25 bob!"

"What's his breeding?" I asked. Somebody giggled.
"He was got by Drought, out of Trapyard," said Lord.

I looked the animal over from his hoofs to his back, while I
wondered what the seller would be asking for an old saddle. I drove
the quadruped round, and scrutinised him fore and aft, while I
mentally fumbled about for a bridle to put on the brute. At last I
made a desperate plunge.

"I'll give you a pound for him," T said.

"Take him, take him!" said Lord, and as he walked
across the yard he lifted his hat, and brushed his hair back with
his hand. Boyce came into the yard, and examined the bargain at
close quarters. Boyce was considered a judge.

"I knew he wasn't very old," said Boyce. "A 'orse
is just in his prime at nine. I reckon he's well worth a
pound."

We commenced breaking in at once, that is, we captured our
purchases with ropes, indulged in some weird and whirling exercises
behind them for a time, and left them in tackle for the night. Next
day the civilising process was continued with mixed results. Lord
Brumby—by Drought, out of Trapyard—turned out a very
docile animal, and I had the satisfaction of riding him bareback
round the yard in the afternoon. Such is the benefit of inspecting
well before buying. When we had pulled his superabundant tail, and
combed out his superfluous mane, he did not look at all bad. With
his ears stiffened a little, and his sides inflated, Lord Brumby,
in fact, would have looked twice his cost price anywhere.

The black colt sulked from the beginning, and by this time he
looked a most deplorable quadruped. His mouth was cut and bleeding,
his lips swollen to the size of six; he had two black eyes, and
there were lumps on him and lumps knocked off him. He leaned back
in the corner, with his forelegs spread out and his head down.
Stahmer pulled his head this way, and he pulled it that way; but
nothing else of him would come with it—barring a grunt.

"Calls himself a horse-breaker!" said Lord, aside.
"He wants three months!"

Harry's big bay was a different character. He was a defiant
animal, and had Harry thoroughly cowed. He did not allow the deaf
gentleman in the same yard with him, his vicious proclivities being
distressfully evident. Harry walked round outside with a bag on the
end of a long stick with which he bashed the rebel whenever he got
a chance. Harry was a good-tempered, patient person, and
persistence eventually wore the outlaw into submission.

On Friday the horses were considered quiet enough to go on the
track, and arrangements were made to start after dinner. I still
wanted a saddle to complete my equipment. Lord brought out several
from a lumber room, and the groom swept the dust and cobwebs off
them. They ranged from 30s down to 5s. I examined the 5s
article.

"Will you take three bob for it?" I asked. It was in
an advanced state of disrepair.

Lord made a gesture of impatience. "If it's not worth five
bob it's worth nothing," he said. "It's not worth arguing
over."

George, who was mooching around with some straps and pieces of
bridle rein in one hand, and a rusty bit in the other, signalled
approval, and intimated, that I wouldn't have to buy a bridle, as
he was seeing to that. So the deal was completed. After all, a
horse saddle and bridle for 25s wasn't excessive.

All hands on the place, including several ladies, assembled to
see the start. Harry and Stahmer packed their colts, and led them
round as a preliminary. There was very little life left in the
black one. He rolled from side to side, with his head down; now and
again he spread out his front legs and groaned in protest. The
ladies said "poor brute," severally and unanimously,
whilst Mr. Lord remarked that the other brute ought to get six
months.

Harry mounted his old chestnut, and essayed to start. The colt
pulled back, and dragged him off. Then he heaved the pack into a
pile of raw horse-hides that had just been unloaded, smashed
through a gate, and bolted to the bottom corner of the home
paddock. When we had brought him back, Lord claimed him for
damages. While interest centred in the argument, Stahmer pulled the
black colt down the track, as one would drag a log, Boyce actively
assisting in the rear. Harry spent half an hour trying to mend the
gate; then he paid 10s in requital. He got on again with an injured
air, requesting me to form a rearguard, to prevent further damage
and to accelerate his departure, and we left Eurombah.

Lord Brumby, tractable and pacing in fine style, gave George an
expression of beaming satisfaction. The little brown hack, he said,
was a credit to my judgment.

Our road hugged the Dawson, and while passing along the edge of
a steep bank, the black colt pulled back and tumbled over, he
turned a dozen somersaults, and landed on his back in a muddy hole,
where he lay half covered with water.

When we had recovered from this shock, we found Harry spread out
in the grass, and the bay colt bucking into the bush, scattering
bags, old shirts, pants, tinware, and blankets as he went. Harry
scrambled to his feet, clawed some dry herbage from his hair, and
collected his pipe and hat.

"See my horse anywhere." he inquired dejectedly. The
rebel had got into a hollow.

"I can hear him," said Boyce; "can't you see
him?"

Harry rubbed several parts of his anatomy. " 'S a strong
'orse that," he reflected.

I went in pursuit of the runaway, whilst the others unpacked the
black colt, and lifted him up. Between shoving and dragging and
belting, they got him to the top. Harry did some more collecting,
and we camped.

It was the last camp for the black colt. During the night he
caught his hobbles against a stump, and turning over, broke his
stiff neck.

From here we had a short ride to Hornet Bank. We must have been
something unusual in the way of travellers, for half a dozen women
gathered on the verandah and stared at us.

Boyce and I endeavoured to pass on; but the pack-horse and the
spare one objected. They split up and ran back. Lord Brumby had no
idea of stockwork, so the onus of blocking and driving devolved
upon me. I raced towards the fence to block the pack-horse. The old
mare I bestrode propped at the fence, and slewed sharply. The girth
broke, and I and the saddle dropped on to the fence, and then
straggled on to the ground. A boisterous laugh from Harry—who
was holding confab with Stahmer back at the gate—was the
precursor to a merry ripple from the women.

While we were repairing the breakages, we became suddenly aware
of something like a tornado rushing along. It was Harry's mutinous
bay. He went flying through the timber, leaving bits of the pack
hanging to branches. When we saw the last of him on a far ridge he
was stripped of his burden; Harry was riding hard on the old
chestnut to keep the outlaw in sight; and Stahmer was running
laboriously behind him to gather up the pieces.

George and I were half an hour fixing things up, and then we
started again. The pack-horse turned into a little pen at the side
of a cottage, to the accompaniment of shrieks from the audience. I
dismounted and dragged the cantankerous thing out, and Boyce flung
a sliprail at it. which turned its head in the right direction. We
passed through the yards, and came to a waterhole. There we
provided more entertainment free of charge. That pack-horse seemed
to think his only mission in the world was to circumnavigate that
waterhole, and he circumnavigated it half a dozen times. Then Boyer
met him with a sapling, which changed his opinions, and he went
well till we reached the river crossing. Right in the middle of it
he lay down and rolled with the pack. We stopped on the other side
to unroll our drenched swags, and spread the contents over the
landscape.

CHAPTER XIII.
Hornet Bank—Grim Memories of the Blacks.

We were a mile from Hornet Bank, a place famous in Australian
history. The buildings are clustered on the end of a ridge, around
which sweeps a long lagoon, and but a short distance from the
river. Fronted by a luxuriant forest, there was excellent cover all
round it for an attack; and, as it was a splendid camping ground,
the occupation of it by the whites was naturally resented. It was
one of the choice spots in the towri of the local blacks, and that,
with subsequent pinpricks and brushes, led up to the murder of the
Frasers on October 29, 1857. There was a little cemetery,
containing the remains of the victims, about 300 yards from the
front of the house, with a stone at the head of each grave. There
were also many other graves within the enclosure, in some of which
lay buried unfortunates who were murdered at other times. These did
not complete the number killed on the run, for the sub-squattages
had their lonely grass-covered mounds, and here and there by
various tracks a small square marked the resting-place of an unwary
shepherd. In some instances bush fires had almost obliterated them,
leaving only the butts of the posts showing black above the
ground.

The old house was pulled down six months previous to this, but
the woolshed was still standing. The blacks broke into the house at
daylight. Whilst they were at their awful work one of the girls
escaped, and ran to the woolshed. The blacks followed, and dragged
her out by the hair, and killed her. Jimmy Fraser, then about 14,
and a brother were sleeping in the one bed. The brother was killed
with a nulla, and Jimmy was stunned. He rolled out and under the
bed, where he lay till the blacks had left the house. Then,
snatching up a bridle, he ran down to a horse which was grazing in
a paddock at the foot of the hill. The blacks, who had been waiting
about, went in pursuit. No one had ever succeeded in catching this
horse outside of a yard; and on the bridling of the doubtful beast
without the loss of a moment the fugitive's life depended.

Strange to say, the horse stood as quiet as a lamb. Fraser
sprang on to his back, and galloped him at a three-railed fence.
The horse smashed through the top rail, and landed on his nose.
Though barebacked, the boy stuck to his seat, and, quickly pulling
his mount together, galloped away and escaped. He was the only
survivor out of eleven persons. Billy, another brother, was at
Ipswich at the time with a team. The victims were the mother, four
daughters, three sons, the tutor, and two male employees. The
survivor, hatless and bootless, first rode to a squattage 12 miles
away; afterwards he went on to Ipswich, 320 miles, covering the
distance, with only two changes of horses, in three days. With his
brother, Billy, who was loading his team at George Wilson's store,
he started back almost immediately, the return journey being
completed in the same time with three changes of horses.

Standing at the graveside of his mother and sisters, with an
uplifted tomahawk in his hand, Billy swore that he would never rest
until he had sunk it in the head of the blackfellow who was the
cause of the murder. And he did it, He lived to be nearly 83, being
still alive at this time, and living on a selection near Mitchell;
but he had many narrow escapes. Once, whilst riding through the
bush, a spear, hurled down from the branches of a tree, plunked
through the rim of his cabbage-tree hat, grazed his
shoulder-blades, and stuck into his saddle.

In revenge for the terrible crimes, Fraser received permission
from the Queensland Government to shoot aborigines at sight for a
term of twelve months. For many years afterwards the name of the
avenger inspired terror in the Queensland blacks.

Though now stocked with cattle, Hornet Bank was once a sheep
run. In those days the shepherds had much trouble with the blacks.
Many were speared in the bush. On one occasion, when the shepherd
had been killed and the sheep driven away, Scott, the then owner of
the squattage, and a strong party followed the tribe. They found
them among the ranges, a few miles from the homestead. The sheep
were held in an enclosure made of boughs, and the blacks were
having a corroboree over the spoil. A volley was the first
intimation they received of the presence of the enemy. Many of them
were shot before they could leave the camp. One old fellow climbed
a tree. He had the leaf of a book in his hands, and whenever Scott
put up the gun to fire, the black held the leaf up between his face
and the muzzle to stop the bullet. When he was shot the trackers
laughed to see him "double up and tumble down." The
callousness and inhumanity of the black trackers towards their own
race was one of the remarkable phases of the period. They would
shield their own tribes, but in dealing with others the whites had
often much difficulty in staying their ferocity.

There is a memorable spot between Hornet Bank and Barunda, noted
for its connection with the Fraser murders. It is a large flat rock
on the edge of a precipice, surrounded by brigalow scrubs, deep
rocky gorges, and wild mountains. On this rock the blacks made
damper with the flour they had stolen from the store immediately
after the raid.

This reminds me of an incident which occurred near Walloon in
later times. The dusky nomads had readily acquired the white man's
habits of smoking and gambling, and they stopped at nothing to
obtain the means of indulgence. They robbed a local store of a
quantity of tobacco and some packs of playing cards, and repaired
with their booty to a hill at the back of the post-office. Here
they squatted, and coolly played cards among themselves for the
plunder. Among the notorious characters still living at this time
were "Old Andrew" and "Lieutenant Billy," alias
"Sandy," who were supposed to have been the ringleaders
of the murderous attack on Hornet Bank. No doubt if one could have
sat at their little camp fires, and talked with them in their own
lingo, these veterans could have accounted for many a lost
shepherd, of whom no trace was ever found by the whites. Another
well-known character was "Wild Toby," whose first
authenticated crime was the murder of his own gin. Sergeant McGuire
and a constable attempted to arrest him. Toby was squatted, with
his heels doubled under him in the usual native fashion, when the
troopers came upon him. He allowed them to approach closely, then
suddenly sprang up and split the constable's head open with his
tomahawk.

Many attempts were made afterwards by squattage people to
"do him in" with poisoned meat. But Toby was too cunning.
He made his gin eat different portions of any suspicious meat he
got hold of, and if it didn't agree with her Toby would have none
of it. Toby was thus widowed pretty often, and mourned many beloved
ones in the course of his career. He was at last shot by Sergeant
Wright, afterwards stationed at Toowoomba, and his skull was for a
long while exhibited at Juandah.

Conflicts between whites and blacks were frequent for years
after the first settlement of the wild regions of the upper Dawson.
In a little clump of wattle close to Hornet Bank I was shown a heap
of decayed skulls and bones of slaughtered blacks. They had
bleached there through forgotten years as a grim memento of the
early days, and in evidence of the deep vengeance of the white
settlers.

This wild and magnificent stretch of country embracing the upper
half of the Dawson River district, and reaching across the upper
parts of the Maranoa and Warrego, may be set down as the bloodiest
tract in Queensland. There may be individual spots here and there
where more blood was spilt in the establishing of settlements; but
this is a red, red tract from end to end—where white women,
girls and children were among the hosts hurried into premature
graves. You cannot travel any part of it without meeting grim
evidences of the raids and dispersals that marked that epoch of
terror, when every tree was regarded with suspicion, and it was not
safe to go out unarmed to catch a horse, or to pick up a stick of
wood. I saw a long grave near the Maranoa—later
on—heaped over with a pile of wood, that contained the
remains of 150 blacks, whom the whites, in revenge, had shot down
at that spot. In a similar grave, on a sandhill near Caroline
Crossing, on the Warrego, 67 had been buried together. A man who
was working in the vicinity one evening boiled his billy with
sticks from this wood pile. Some blacks saw him, and ever
afterwards he was shunned by them. They called him
Wokka-atchie—a native name of the crow; and no blackfellow
would knowingly approach within coo-ee of him.

The blacks in this part were very numerous, the country
throughout being rich in game. They were tall—many of the
women reaching six feet—well-built in proportion, muscular
and athletic. But they were treacherous, of a cruel and savage
disposition—the most warlike and the most daring in
Australia.

While we were spelling on the river bank there came to our camp
a wayworn and haggard blackboy—like a ghost from the abyss of
the past. A drover had taken him from his native district above
Normanton, down to Murrurundi, on the Page River, N.S.W. There they
left him, without food or money, to find his way back to the Gulf
country as best he could. He was tramping barefooted, half his time
starving. This was his second attempt to leave the Dawson. He had
passed Kinnoul a fortnight before; but the blacks intercepted him,
stole his blanket, and drove him back. He dreaded the Dawson
blacks, averring that they would kill him. He was now attempting a
route across the Carnarvon Range to Springsure, and thence to the
far-off Flinders. We gave him some tobacco and matches, and he set
out like a child going into the dark.

We had already dropped into our special places, as mates
generally do on the track. George Boyce was horse-hunter. I was
cook. At each new camp George made the fire; I filled the billies
and put them on. When mosquitoes were bad, each gathered cowdung or
corkwood for his own side; and whenever either woke up at night it
was his duty to go round the fires quietly and to notice which way
the bells were. Some mates shirk this duty on cold nights. When he
has been chilled—or stung—into wakefullness, the
shirker surreptitiously rouses the other fellow, and pretends to be
dead asleep himself.

I had not suspected George of any tricks like that until we were
close to Barundah. It was Saturday night, and we were camped by the
river, on a low, narrow level between the water and a precipitous
ridge. We had collected a good supply of firing before turning in.
As a rule, we had to attend to the fires about twice each during
the night; but on this occasion I got up five times, and each time
I noticed that the heaps had not changed since my previous visit.
On one or two occasions I had a feeling that I had been disturbed
by something more than the kick of a mosquito; but the reproachful
tone of George's matutinal greeting disarmed me. "By
cripes," he said, "you slept good last night; I was up
half a dozen times."

A shortage of provisions compelled us on Sunday morning to push
on to Barundah, which had a well-supplied store. I made a damper
with our last bit of flour while George was away looking for the
horses. When it was baked I stood it against a stone to cool, and
as there was yet no sign of George I strolled along the river bank
to see if the horses had crossed back. Returning to camp, I
disturbed a flock of ravens that had been having a feast in my
absence. All that was left of my damper was a thin shell. George
came back shortly afterwards. When he learned what had happened,
the expression of his wizened face positively hurt me.

"A beauty to mind a camp you are!" he reproached.
"Don't you know there's crows in this country?"

He looked round carefully, after we had strapped the packs on,
to see if anything had been missed.

"Crows are always watchin' a traveller," he said,
tightening his girths. "On a dry track they follow him for
miles. An' 'tain't a cheerful prospect when the crows start to
follow yer; makes yer feel 's if yer goin' to your own
funeral." Pause. "I was havin' a doss one hot day under a
tree. Pretty soon there was half a dozen crows in the branches,
squintin' down at me an' discussin' my condition. They shifted
lower an' lower, an' by-an'-bye one got a dry stick an' dropped it
down on me to see if I was dead." Another pause. "Always
cover your head up when you're havin' a daylight nap in the open,
unless you want to go about with a signboard in front of yer
notifyin' the gen'ral public that you can't see where you're
goin'."

He lit his pipe, and pressed the glowing tobacco down with a
nicotine-stained finger.

"Cover your damper up, too," he concluded, as we
turned the pack-horses on to the track.

It was a stiff climb up a stony ridge to begin with. The road,
which was hardly discernible in places, wound through dense scrubs,
over rocks and stones and beds of spinifex. "Only two miles to
Barundah," George had said when we started. He knew every inch
of that country.

When we had ridden about seven miles we descended into a narrow
valley, leading our horses. There was a steep, rocky hill on the
other side, with a broad track to the top. George said that was a
roundabout way to Roma; the place we were looking for was down the
flat.

In about an hour we came to the river, which was wide and deep.
Along the bank the grass brushed our knees on horseback. We rode up
the river, here and there leading our horses down into deep
ravines, and scrambling out again; taking sheer drops down
precipitous banks; climbing round jutting rocks, high above the
water, and reefing through brush and bramble, till we came to a
rugged cliff that rose abruptly from the water. Further progress
was impossible.

We turned back, and in attempting a difficult descent we had a
mishap. The horses slid down the bank in a bunch—into the
river. They were not hurt; but they got out on the other side! We
swam over in a hurry, and pursued the runaways to Barundah
horse-paddock, where we caught them. Our packs were sopping wet, so
we made clothes-lines with our reins and straps, and hung
everything out to dry. Meantime we made camp in sight of Barundah,
which was a sub-squattage, belonging to Hornet Bank, and dated back
to the days of massacres and dispersals.

A big hill, just across the river, took my attention. On
inquiring, we learnt that we had turned off on the other side of
that hill—just one mile away. Which shows how easily a man
may go astray if he thinks he is lost when he isn't. Sometimes it
is better not to know a road at all than to only half know it.

October 14. — We crossed the Dawson for the last time
above Barundah. It was all but a swim, and we got out in a damp
condition. Passed between steep, rocky hills to Expedition Creek,
which we crossed half a dozen times, and turned out for lunch at
Murdering Gully. A man named Sullivan settled on this gully at the
time when pioneering was interesting. According to local report, he
had a family of 22 sons. One night the blacks attacked the place,
and killed 21 of them, from which circumstance the gully derived
its name.

We had strapped part of the pack on the spare nag, and about 4
o'clock she knocked up. We then put it all on the grey mare. Our
pack-saddle was an overlander—made with crossed sticks,
kangaroo skin, bags and grass. It rolled on the grey's round back,
and once, going down a hill, it got under her belly. She danced and
pranced the rest of the way down, and so seriously damaged the
concern that we had to make a halt to effect repairs.

Camped on Spring Gully at dusk, dead tired from driving
knocked-up horses. While the billy boiled we treated ourselves to a
shower bath. This we accomplished by standing near the hole and
pouring the water over ourselves with a pannikin.

From here we rode next day through thick forests of cypress pine
to Strathmore—a deserted hut, which, like a lot more bush
huts, had the reputation of being haunted. A swagman was camping
there one night when a man in a long white shirt dropped in and
asked for a pipe of tobacco. There was nothing unusual in this
request; but when night falls on a lonely place and gets mixed up
with long white shirts, the situation is not quite satisfactory.
The swagman said he had left his tobacco on a stump outside, and
would go and get it. When he got outside he started running, and
did not stop till he reached Mount Huxton. A stockman brought in
the abandoned swag a day or two later, and reported that the ghost
had been seen at different stages farther on. It was a married
ghost, travelling with its wife in a tilted cart. It mostly donned
a nightgown of Betty's after dark, because the garment, being long,
protected the spectre's legs from mosquitoes.

"I saw a real ghost once," said George,
musingly—''one night when I was camped by the mailman's track
on the side of Mount Lindsay. I was out of tobacco. I s'pose yer
know what a lovely plight that is when you're on your ace, an'
nothin' ter do but sit an' look at the fire? I was wishin' someone
would turn up, when all at once I hears the rattle of dray-wheels
down through the timber; an' after a while I sees a dray comin' up
the track. There was an old joker sittin' in it, moody like, with
one hand proppin' his chin, an' the other holdin' the reins. I
reckoned I was in luck's way at last, an' waits till he comes close
by. Then I gets up an' sings out, 'Good night!' The chock-clock of
the wheels stopped, an' the horse, dray an' driver disappeared like
a whiff of smoke. I went to the road, an' looks about; but there
warn't a sign of anything. An' yet I'd seen the whole turn-out as
plain as daylight! It was so mighty queer that I couldn't sleep
after for thinkin' an' listenin'. Fust thing in the mornin' I ups
an' searches all round very careful; but hang me if there was a
wheel track of any sort, high or low. I got a move on quick an'
lively, an' when I gets to Unumgar they tells me about a murder
what 'appened on the mountain years ago. It was the time of the
Taloom diggin's, an' a rough shanty was opened on the road between
Noogara an' Koreelah Creek. An old bloke with a horse an' cart
stopped there one night; an' it leaked out somehow that he 'ad near
a 'undred quid on him. He left next mornin', an' hours afterwards
the horse came back with the cart—but no driver. They found
him dead on the range—fleeced of every bean. Well, after the
shanty was deserted, coves used ter see a ghost there pretty often,
but it mostly took the form of an old chap sittin' on a log,
patchin' his pants. I s'pose the loss of his money left him hard
up, an' he had ter come down to that or go naked; an' naked ghosts
somehow don't seem ter be in the fashion."

CHAPTER XV.
In a Scalper's Camp—A Night Attack—Westward-Ho.

A cup of tea at Merrivale put George in good spirits, and he
sang bits of song and told yarns by turns as we rode out to the
Three-Mile-Waterholes, where a scalper was camped, doing big
business among the wallabies that abounded in neighbouring brigalow
scrubs. The camp was George's home—or the nearest approach to
such that this lone wight of the bush could lay claim to.

The managing-director of the scalping industry was a big
middle-aged man named Whistle. He did no wallaby hunting or
scalping himself; that was done by a tribe of blacks, who received
opium and rations in return. Some got tobacco also—if they
earned it. The rations were munificent. Night and morning a
kerosene-tin of water was boiled, into which was thrown a handful
of post-and-rail tea and a pannikin of brown sugar. One pannikin of
this mixture and a smoke of tobacco, or its equivalent in damper
was each one's breakfast; and the same quantity of tea and a small
slice of damper were doled out at night. They received also a
nightcap of opium.

The camp consisted of four gunyahs, two tents and a galley. One
tent contained the boss and the rations; in the other the skins and
scalps were stored. The tribe were camped three miles farther out,
and only four gins were here, two of whom were stringing scalps on
wires and stretching them between trees to dry.

We were invited to spell our horses there; it transpired that
the tribe was getting a little out of hand, and Whistle was feeling
uncomfortable.

One afternoon I went with him to the outcamp. He expected
trouble over the rations, and took me for protection. It was
sunset, when we got to the camp. There were many small fires, but
no gunyahs. About 60 blackfellows, more gins, and many more
piccaninnies were mixed up among 490 dogs. All were naked, male and
female. They gathered round us, clamouring for meeta (opium
charcoal) and mookine (opium). Whistle handed me his revolver, with
instructions to stand back behind him. Then he commenced to dole
out the rations, and simultaneously the hunters began to grumble.
Quickly the grumbling and dissatisfaction spread. Some returned
their allowances with scorn, and in ten minutes the whole camp had
struck. There was a tremendous uproar, many approaching menacingly.
Whistle held up his hand, and the clamour ceased. Then he
spoke:

This settled the dispute, and we rode back to the depot. The
tribe came in soon after us, and camped on the opposite side of the
water. In good scrubs these blacks killed from 100 to 200 wallabies
a day. The pay was one penny per pair. Poor Murri was often hunting
all day to earn his evening smoke and his pint of weak tea. Some at
times failed to make that, and these borrowed scalps from their
more lucky compatriots. An account of such dealings was kept by
them on a stick.

We prepared to receive them. When all was quiet, Whistle and I
lay down, one on each side of the tent, armed respectively with a
rifle and a revolver. Boyce was posted inside to watch the
entrance, his weapon being an old-time gun, which he had loaded
himself.

It was a starlit night, but dark under the trees. We were
watching an opening towards the main camp, expecting they would
come direct. But they crept round the lagoon, and came in a body
towards the front. The first intimation we received of their
presence was in the form of a thunderous report from the gun,
followed by several half-suppressed yells and a general stampede
through the darkness.

When these had died away a series of groans and sighs came from
the interior of the tent. We hurried in and found George lying on
his back behind the flour bag, and the antique weapon sticking
through the side of the tent. George had rammed half a pound of
shot into it, and the old thing retaliated.

In the morning the ringleaders were hunted out of camp, and the
others submitted sulkily to the terms of the scalp-hunter.

"I'll 'ave ter stay on with Whistle," George announced
at this stage. 'Those devils might mutiny again, and he might get
murdered if I ain't here."

* * * * * *

I left Merrivale on October 25, and set out alone for the
Warrego. At first I strapped my swag in front of me, but Brownie,
the plodding old moke I now bestrode, was so long, and there was so
much superfluous space behind, that a pack in front made us
ridiculous. So I stuffed everything into a wallet (a bag sewn at
both ends, with a slit in the middle) and threw it across his
loins. I had been compelled to swop my brumby hack—which had
gone lame and got low in condition—for him at the scalper's
camp. He was a big, brown animal, with a tremendous hollow in the
back of him. He had the head and hoofs of a cart-horse, and had
been young in the days when I was going to school. He looked sorry,
as though he had some great family affliction on his mind. He
wasn't a quadruped that one could take a pride in, or become fond
of. He was too ill-shapen for that; and no amount of grooming would
make him look even decently dressed. The only way to improve an
angular beast like him was with a squaring axe. There was nothing
vicious about him; he was so quiet that it was impossible to
frighten him. He was a great horse to meditate; he would stand
under a tree and meditate for hours. He had two good
points—according to George, his last owner—inasmuch as
he was a weight-carrier and a good camper.

A hard week on a dry track brought me to the Hoganthulla, a
tributary of the Warrego, where Brownie knocked up. We had crossed
a lot of grassless country, and a perish or two had not improved
matters; but five miles ahead there were splendid grass and flowing
waters. I took the bridle and pulled him, with the reins over my
shoulder, till he wouldn't come any more; pushed and zig-zagged
him; then got on him by way of a change. By dint of hard riding,
driving and dragging, I got him within a mile of Killarney, and
there let him go. He didn't go far, though he fed about for awhile
as if he was enjoying himself.

At dusk a cold drizzle set in, and this affecting his weakened
constitution, he took shelter under a tree. He was still there in
the morning, only he was lying down with a straight neck. When I
approached him with the bridle a goanna crawled leisurely away from
his legs, and overhead the crows were gathering. He was theirs.

I took the hobbles and bell off him, and hung them, with my
saddle and bridle, on the tree that stood for his monument. As I
collected my remaining property I thought of the manager of a
western squattage who, when asked by the owners to report as to how
the place had come through a recent drought, made up a parcel of
sundries: a piece of hide containing the squattage brand, three
hoofs, a greenhide girth, a pair of horns, the skin of the cattle
dog, and a rotten water-bag. This he forwarded, with the addendum:
"Gentlemen, these are the assets."

In "Matilda's" loving embrace I stepped out for
Augathella. Hereabouts, on the Tambo mail track, I caught up a
swagman and chummed in with him. He was an old man, with a short,
scraggy beard, a sharp, wizened face, and a scalded nose. He had
bandy legs, and wore boyangs. A part of his name was Jack.

Three or four miles out of Augathella there was a big scrub. We
were half-way through this when Jack suddenly called out, pointing
ahead: "That's mine! I seen it first." It was a new
water-bag, which someone had dropped from a vehicle. "The very
thing I wanted," he remarked, with much pleasure; and while he
strapped it to his swag I walked on slowly, thinking I might see
another one. I didn't; but immediately after Jack drew level with
me he called out again: "That's mine!"

It was a good saddle-strap this time, which was another item he
happened to want. I admit I was a little exasperated at this point,
and became as circumspective as a white hawk.

We walked on for a long while, too watchful to speak; and when
at last I spied something far ahead I fairly
yelled—"That's mine!" Jack gave a nervous jump, and
dropped his billy. "Dash it all," he growled, "yer
needn't frighten a man, if it is your'n."

He was sulky for a bit, but when we drew near to the object he
looked more pleased than ever. "Mine" was a dead cat.

That night we put up at Biddenham, a sheep squattage on the Nive
River, where shearing was in full swing. From here we travelled by
way of the Ward River, and across wearying, wide, grey plains to
Tambo, and after a couple of days' rest there we started down the
Barcoo.

Boyangs was an eccentric character. He was never talkative, but
always suspicious and pessimistic. He slept apart, and boiled his
own billy at his own fire. Once, after he had spread his things
out, being dissatisfied with my first choice, I dumped my swag down
under the same tree. When I started to unroll he found fault with
the ground, and shifted. The approach of a drover seemed to
electrify his otherwise lagging legs. He stepped out briskly to
precede me, lest I, being younger, should step into the probable
vacancy.

Late in the afternoon I met a man driving a small mob of
bullocks. They were poor, lame, and knocked up, and he was flogging
them along—a few at a time. They belonged to a mob of Kihee
cattle, which were feeding along behind. These would not feed; they
would only stand under trees. They were continually striking off
for trees, and if there were no trees in sight they lagged behind,
and the others had to be held till they were fetched along. So this
man was put in charge of the culls, and his duty was to dodge them
along to camp as best he could.

"It would break your heart," he said. "It's all
day like this. Thank God, my week's up to-night. If you want a job,
you sight old Swiker; he'll be coming along directly. He's a
corpulent man, with a flowing beard."

"What sort 'of a boss is he?"

"Oh, a fair cow. I'll give you one week with him."

Boyangs had come up, and, hearing of the possible billet, he lit
out for Swiker with remarkable energy. I lit out, too, and for a
mile it was a fair ding-dong walking match. Boyangs by this time
was puffing like a locomotive, and the sweat was running down
through the dust in little streams, making his face look like a
tattooed Maori's.

"I'll toss you for it!" he panted.

My sling came undone, and I lost two minutes fixing it. Boyangs
was in front again, and the tossing was postponed. Then Swiker
cantered up on a big, grey horse.

"Good day!" said Boyangs, throwing his hand up.
"Any chance of a job!"

Swiker looked him up and down. "Can you ride?"

"Ride!" Boyangs repeated. "I was reared on
horses, went to school on 'em, earned me livin' on
'em—drovin'. That's what makes me bandy-legged. 'S a wonder
to me I don't whinny in me sleep, for I jes' grew on a
'orse."

"An' when I come to look at yer, I'm danged if you're the
sort of drover I'm lookin' for!" Boyangs retorted, and passed
on. I turned back with Swiker; and there, on Greendale boundary, on
the bank of the Barcoo, ended my jaunt on the wallaby.